Phoenix Unbound
by Matchbox Dragon
Summary: Sequel to Phoenix Rising. Warren and the gang run into some familiar faces from Sky High while battling a rogue scientist with an ambitious experiment on superpowers using human subjects.
1. KnightFire No 1

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

_**A/N:**__ This story is the sequel to Phoenix Emergent and Phoenix Rising – if you don't read those first, don't blame me if this one doesn't make sense ;)_

**Chapter 1****: Knight-Fire #1 **

"So, how was your first day at Sky High?"

Nicola looked up at her cousin in surprise as they sat down on a bench in the botanical gardens. Even though they were in a less-popular area and she hadn't seen any other people around, she would have thought they would need to be more cautious about what they discussed. But Warren didn't seem too concerned about being overheard so she decided to just take her cue from him.

"A lot like you guys told me about," she replied with a smile. The night before, the group had sat her down and given her all sorts of survival tips for starting at their old school, some bits more useful than others. She rather suspected that Warren and the rest of the Guardians had pulled some strings to get her into the school in her sophomore year, considering her day had started in Principal Powers' office with a little speech about how lucky she was to get this opportunity. "Only they don't have Heroes and Sidekicks, or Hero Support or whatever, anymore. Everyone takes all the same classes and, thanks to the shining example of yourself and your partners in anti-crime, there's a lot of teamwork stuff."

"Layla will be so happy to hear they've done away with Power Placement," Warren commented.

"Uh, not completely. I still had to go through it – with the freshmen, which was way embarrassing – but it's now called Power Proficiency, and it only applies to gym class. Apparently, the story goes, it's because one time a Student Formally Known As Hero seriously injured a Student Formally Known As Sidekick during Save the Citizen, so now you only do gym class with people who aren't likely to be able to kill you."

"So Boomer still gets to have his little ego trip at the beginning of the year then?"

"Yip, scary gym shorts and all, just like Zach's description."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, and I was so sure Zach was just pulling my leg. By the way, speaking of stories, I heard something very interesting about you."

He held up one hand. "If it's about the cafeteria fight with Stronghold, it's probably grossly exaggerated."

"Hey, what cafeteria fight with Will?"

"Never mind," he replied quickly. "What did you hear about me?"

She made a mental note to ask either him or Will about that again later, and went on, "Well, my lab partner in Mad Science is this geek girl who knows about every superpowered person in the world, it seems, and we had to light a Bunsen burner so I used the lighter you gave me." Warren nodded as she referred to the phoenix-embossed Zippo he'd given her when he lost his powers. She'd offered to give it back when his powers returned a few months ago, but he simply got a new one instead. "Anyhow, when she saw the phoenix on it and I told her you'd given it to me, she decided to impress me by reciting a whole lot of facts and stats about you, including the fact that you're a _fire elemental_!"

Warren looked thoughtful. "Wonder how she found that out. It's not exactly common knowledge."

"No, it's not. Even I, your own cousin, didn't know that." She gave him a mock scowl. "Thanks a lot, I looked like a real idiot in front of Miss Know-it-all."

"Hey, be nice to geeks. They'll probably end up saving your life someday, even if you don't quite understand their explanation of how they did it."

"Stop avoiding the topic. I mean, I knew you had more than one power, but four? That's, like, incredible." She gave him a serious look. "Why didn't you tell me last year that the ultimate pyro which the Battle family were trying to breed would be just like you?"

He shrugged. "That would have been showing off, I guess."

"Hmm, is that also the reason you didn't tell me about some fight with Will? Was that also showing off?"

"Nah, that was just boys behaving badly, and if I told you about that it might have spoilt your image of him as the City's golden boy."

She smirked. "Aw, that's sweet of you to protect him like that. On the subject of Will, are he and Kate _ever_ going to be able to get married?"

"At the rate things are going, they'll still be engaged when they retire from hero work," Warren replied dryly.

Ten days ago he wouldn't have been able to answer so lightheartedly. The night before Will and Kate were going to get married, the Guardians had been battling with a super villain gang on top of one of the tallest buildings in the City. While Will had been pinned down by three thugs almost as strong as he was, one of the other criminals had thrown Kate off the roof. Layla had desperately grown some vegetation to try and break her fall, but with the height of the building she still landed pretty hard. It took a lot to seriously injure someone of Kate's level of invulnerability, and they had all been quite worried for a while. At the time, postponing a wedding had been the least of their concerns.

"She's getting better, though, isn't she?"

"Oh yeah, much better. If anything happens this weekend while we're away, I'm sure she and Stronghold will be able to handle it. They can always call in his parents if need be."

Nicola smiled playfully. "I'm glad Kate's okay, but I'm also sure you'd _love_ an excuse to not go."

Warren just rolled his eyes. He would have given a lot to get out of the upcoming trip with Layla and her parents to visit her aunt and family at their new home in Metrocity. He wasn't even sure why this little family reunion was taking place at all, considering it was no secret that Margo Tyler did not exactly approve of her brother's hippie wife and daughter. As for Warren himself, she'd taken one look at him and decided he was bad news, and then snidely asked what had happened to 'that nice boy next door whom Layla was so in love with'. Of course, he knew he couldn't blame her for making that kind of snap judgment about him considering how long he'd spent cultivating his bad boy image, but still that didn't mean he had to like it. He supposed he should be grateful that Layla had managed to get out of inviting the Tylers to their wedding.

Nicola had a thought. "You're not going to go there in, like, an airplane are you? Seems ridiculous when you think how fast your best friend can fly."

"Yeah, but he's not too good with baggage handling at that speed," Warren quipped. "Plus, there's six of us going, including Popsicle and Denise because they want to visit the equivalent of level 4a there," he added, referring to the top-secret floor of Maxville Hospital for people with superpowers. "Zach wanted to go too, to visit GeoWorld Theme Park with us – don't ask. Anyhow, we're getting a lift in the van."

Just then Warren looked up as if he'd heard something, and a cloud of sparks swooped up to where they were sitting. The cloud coalesced briefly into a small firebird before curling up on his outstretched hand, where the fire formed into a flickering image of people walking among trees.

"There're people coming," he told her as he closed his hand, extinguishing the fiery messenger. "We'd better leave."

Nicola thought quickly back to what her lab partner had said about his powers and realized what she had just seen. "So I'm guessing that was a flame construct?"

"Yeah, I left a sentry at each of the paths leading this way," he answered casually.

That would certainly explain why he wasn't concerned about eavesdroppers. Like she'd said earlier, incredible. She'd only ever seen Kate use her pyro-construction from a distance or on television, so seeing a construct up close was something new for her.

But she couldn't resist teasing him as he dispersed his other 'sentries' and they headed back to the entrance. "And I suppose you're going to tell me _that's_ not showing off?"

* * *

Zach dropped Ethan and Denise off at Metrocity Hospital and then took Warren, Layla and her parents to a car rental agency. Mr. and Mrs. Williams agreed that it was definitely a more pleasant trip than a commercial airline would have been, and not just because it took half the travel time.

They pulled up at Aunt Margo's house at twilight, and there was a flurry of hugs, kisses and an awful lot of very fake smiles. Warren also got to meet Layla's cousins for the first time. Her uncle had died five years ago, so it was just her aunt and the boys. Keith was about his age and looked quite preppy with his neat dark hair and button-down shirt, while Bradley was 12 and sported the same red hair as Layla.

While they were waiting for Keith's girlfriend to join them for dinner, Aunt Margo suggested looking at Layla's wedding photos, which she dutifully got out and the three women sat together on one of the couches to go through the album. Meanwhile, Bradley decided that this was all too girly for him, and took out his newest superhero comic book, which sparked an avid discussion between him and Warren about the relative strengths of various heroes and villains.

Layla looked up from turning the pages of her wedding album and smiled at the sight of the two of them, wondering if Bradley knew that the characters they were comparing were actually real people. The National Council of Superheroes released declassified mission reports to the two officially sanctioned comic publishers, Wonder Comics and BC Comics, who used them as the basis for their storylines. In fact, it had been well-known at Sky High that Warren had only passed Hero History because of his years spent reading comics.

Aunt Margo suddenly disturbed her reverie by holding up her left hand to look at her ring. "Don't you have an engagement ring, dear?" she asked with an accusing glance at Warren who studiously ignored her.

He allowed himself a small smile, though, at Layla's staunch defense of her choice to not have an engagement ring which then progressed into a sweeping statement that their wedding rings were priceless (so there). Which they were, actually, considering they were transmutated by Denise from mild steel into Durosium, and the indestructible metal didn't actually have a value on the Stock Exchange as such, making them – literally – priceless.

The doorbell rang, putting an end to that conversation as Keith ushered his girlfriend into the living room. From the couch Warren was sitting on, to the side of the door, he was out of her line of vision, so she didn't see him at first.

But he definitely saw her. He just couldn't believe who he was seeing.

Layla was equally flabbergasted. "Amber?"

It was Amber White, a.k.a. Freeze-Girl.

"Layla? Wow, small world, isn't it?"

Layla got up to give her a hug. "I didn't know you were back in the country?"

"Oh yeah, I came back soon after high school graduation. It's so nice to see you and Wi–" She swung around and stopped dead. "Warren??"

Amber looked between the two of them in shock. Her surprise was quite understandable, actually. After all, the last time she saw them before she emigrated, Layla and Will were still Sky High's golden couple.

Warren couldn't resist. "Oh, you were expecting Prince Charming?"

"No, no," she answered, obviously trying to regain her composure. "Just Will Stronghold."

"That's what I meant," he replied dryly.

* * *

"So, have you seen anyone else from our old school lately?" Layla asked Amber during dinner.

"Yeah, I see Brett Simmonds in this part of the City quite often, one or two others in other areas now and then," the blonde replied.

Warren narrowed his eyes slightly at her mention of the pyrokinetic, a complete jerk a year younger than him at Sky High. He'd been notorious for bullying the hero support kids until Warren and Will completely creamed him and Carbon Copy Kid at Save the Citizen soon after Warren got his second power. Funnily enough he behaved himself a lot better for the rest of his school career. Still, the idea of Simmonds actually being an active superhero – and partnered with someone as respectable as Amber – was quite difficult to accept.

Meanwhile, Amber was asking after the rest of their gang. "And I hear Will's pretty much taken over the Maxville branch of parents' realty business nowadays?"

"Yeah, his parents take care of the out-of-town and international business."

She nodded. "I saw them here a few weeks ago, striking a deal on some riverside property." The Commander and Jetstream had been called in when the Mad Collector had starting beaming away the Metrocity Bridge to add to his private collection of historical architecture.

"I heard it was quite a steal," Warren commented. Talking over everybody else's heads like this was somewhat risky, but also really fun.

As they were clearing the table after dinner, Amber's cell phone rang. From the look on her face as she answered it, Warren and Layla guessed that it was a distress call. Apparently, like the Guardians, she didn't bother with having two separate cell phones; it was much easier to just have a different ring tone for emergencies.

"Yeah, don't worry, I'll be right there," she finished, closing her phone as she turned to the others, "I'm sorry, everyone, but I have to go. It's my sister; she's having another episode, you know, ranting and screaming and stuff, and I'm the only one who can get her to chill out."

That confirmed Warren's suspicion, because he knew perfectly well she didn't have a sister. Psycho family members; that was definitely a new one. But, come to think about it, it was a pretty good cover story considering it gave her an excuse to leave urgently at any time of day.

Layla played along smoothly by making a suitably sympathetic comment while Warren offered to take the stack of plates Amber was clearing.

He put the plates down in the kitchen and caught up with the cryokinetic at the door.

"Do you need a hand?"

She smiled. "You shouldn't be working, Warren, you're on vacation." He pulled a wry face to suggest what he thought of his 'vacation', and she gave him a sympathetic look before adding, "Besides, I already have a partner with your … talents."

"I can do other stuff he can't now," he told her quietly, knowing that she'd already left Sky High before he got even his second power, let alone the rest.

"Yeah I heard a few rumors about that, but for the moment, don't worry, I'll be fine." She took off the stylish glasses that were evidently part of her disguise, much like the senior Strongholds. "Thanks for the offer anyway." With that she was gone.

* * *

Keith was almost at the hall when he saw his girlfriend standing in the doorway talking to Warren, and he ducked back out of sight to listen in.

"Besides, I already have a partner with your … talents," he heard her say, and he frowned as he tried to catch Warren's response from his position.

The next thing he was able to hear was Amber saying "Thanks for the offer anyway," and then the door opening and closing as she left.

There was only one thing that could mean. He couldn't believe the guy could have made such an indecent proposal at a time like this, when she was so worried about her sister.

If Keith was a more primitively aggressive type, he would suggest taking this outside and settling it once and for all, however he was far too mature for that sort of thing, firmly believing that violence didn't solve anything. Of course, this sentiment had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that in a physical confrontation with his cousin's husband he would definitely wind up second-best (or possibly even third-best).

The most sensible and mature course of action would be to get Layla to handle it, and in the meantime settle for snide comments.

* * *

When the table was cleared, they all sat in the living room and Keith flipped through the channels until Bradley asked him to go back to the news, having seen a glimpse of superhero action.

'_We can confirm that the countdown on the bomb is completely frozen,_' commented the reporter on the scene. '_It seems Freeze-Woman has iced it completely.'_

Warren and Layla exchanged an amused glance at the mention of her superhero name. Apparently she felt she'd outgrown 'Freeze-_Girl_'.

'_And now she and Fire-Man are chasing after the perpetrators who __are escaping in their getaway car with the priceless artworks!_'

As they watched, Simmonds threw a volley of fireballs to cut off the criminals' escape while Amber used her ice powers to keep the fire from getting out of control. Soon they and the police had the car cornered and surrounded, but still the thieves refused to surrender. Then Simmonds threw a fireball directly at the car and the roof started to burn. The criminals were evidently cowards because they tumbled out of the car and straight into the waiting hands of the police. Amber quickly extinguished the fire before the artworks were damaged.

The two of them smiled tiredly for the cameras, and Layla leaned over to Warren, saying in a very soft teasing voice, "Looks like they didn't need any help after all."

He gave her a sardonic half-smile and murmured, "Actually, they make a surprisingly good team."

Keith evidently picked up a bit of their exchange, and felt the need to comment. "Yeah, they're good at their job, but their costumes are quite indecent. All I can say is I'm glad my girlfriend doesn't dress like that."

The irony of that statement was, of course, staggering. Carefully avoiding eye contact with each other, Layla smothered her laugh with a cough while Warren drew on his years of experience at poker to keep a straight face. Even so, they were almost at the point of losing the battle when Bradley said something that floored them both.

"Actually, Knight-Fire's better than both of them put together."

In one movement, Warren and Layla turned and stared at him. It was quite rare for heroes to be known outside of their own City, apart from a few famous individuals such as Will's parents, of course.

Layla recovered first. "How do you know about him?"

Bradley shrugged. "Same way as I know about any other superhero." He looked at Warren curiously. "There was only ever one issue of Knight-Fire, but I would have thought you'd have read it. Want me to go fetch it?"

"Please." Warren was really confused. The NCS only released the mission reports of heroes who were dead, had retired to remote locations or returned to their planet of origin, in order to protect the identities of active heroes. This meant that either the NCS department in charge of declassification hadn't been informed that he was actually still alive during the time when he'd lost his powers (always possible in a top-secret government organization) or the comic in question was the work of an underground publisher.

When Layla's cousin returned with _Knight-Fire #1_, he saw from the logo in the top left corner that it was the latter in this case. This was one of the most disreputable comic book publishers, and the NCS kept trying to close them down without much success.

"You know this comic company publishes totally fictitious stuff, right?" he said to Bradley. One of their comics even portrayed the Commander and Jetstream as brother and sister, a concept Will thought was just too gross to contemplate and asked Warren to ceremonially burn any issue he came across.

"_All_ comics are totally fictitious!" stated Keith pompously.

"Yeah, it's practically a supermarket tabloid," Bradley agreed with Warren, ignoring his brother completely. "I mean, can you imagine _Knight-Fire's_ father being a super villain?"

"Yeah, imagine that," answered Warren vaguely as he paged through the comic. The danger was that an awful lot of it was true, or at least mild exaggeration. There was even an extremely cheesy Luke-I-Am-Your-Father scene between Knight-Fire and Combustion, in which the only accurate part was Barron Battle's hero name. To Warren's relief, however, his real name was not given, and there was no allusion to Layla, Will or the rest of the Guardians.

Bradley was on a roll. "I mean, when I read this, I thought the guy was quite cool, for a comic book character. Then I found out he's a real active superhero, and the little bits I've seen on TV of the stuff he does is totally awesome! You're so lucky you live in Maxville. I gotta come visit you sometime and maybe I'll get to see him."

"Yeah, maybe you will," replied Warren, only half-aware of the irony of the statement. He flipped back to the title page, and suddenly he understood. Under the 'Writer' credit it read 'Brett Simmonds.' It made sense – all the classified information about him in the comic was pretty much common knowledge at Sky High. So, although Simmonds would be in serious trouble if the NCS found out about this, at least it wasn't a major security breach … more like a minor irritation.

Oh well, join the club, thought Warren with a brief glance in the direction of Keith who was regarding him with an unpleasant expression for some reason. It looked like the weekend was going to be full of minor irritations.


	2. Hot and Cold

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

**Chapter 2: ****Hot and Cold**

The next morning everyone was getting ready for the day's outing to GeoWorld Theme Park after breakfast. Keith was reading the Saturday morning newspaper and commenting on some of the articles, which no one was listening to. Mr. and Mrs. Williams were trying to engage Aunt Margo in polite conversation, but she was too busy airing her disapproval of Layla's vegetarianism. Meanwhile, Warren and Bradley were having an in-depth discussion on active and passive components of superpowers.

"Thus, basically, it's _active_ when the superhero has to consciously power up, it's _passive_ when it's there all the time or it kicks in on its own, like super-healing," Bradley finished his explanation.

"So, something like invulnerability would be a passive component then, right?" Warren responded, and Layla couldn't help smiling. Warren was paying a lot more attention to this genius-type lecture than he ever did when it was Ethan or Denise.

"Good example. Take the Commander, for instance. His super-strength is an active power, he has to intentionally power up in order to activate it."

Except when he accidentally squashes footballs and snaps pool cues, thought Warren dryly, but he kept a straight face and nodded as if the example was purely theoretical.

Bradley continued, "On the other hand, his invulnerability – which is part and parcel of his super-strength – is passive. It's there all the time, even when he's unconscious."

The pyro was about to reply when his cell phone rang. "Is it Will?" asked Layla as he glanced at the caller ID and nodded before answering his phone and walking outside to have a (relatively) private conversation.

When he was out of earshot, theoretically at least, he asked, "So, what were you guys up to last night when I tried to get hold of you?" He'd left a message on Stronghold's voicemail the night before about _Knight-Fire #1_.

'_Oh, nothing we couldn't handle,'_ Will replied cheerfully. _'A couple of super-charged bank robbers, but we cleaned them up, no problem.'_

"Are you sure?"

'_Honestly, Warren, the City is not gonna fall down just because you're not here,'_ came Kate's voice. Evidently Stronghold was on speakerphone.

Magenta was also there. _'Actually, Kate, I think it's less that Warren's concerned about the City's welfare and more that he'd love an excuse to come home!'_

"No comment," replied Warren.

Ethan joined the conference call from where he was at the Metrocity Hospital, and got straight to the point. _'So, about this comic book that Brett Simmonds wrote?'_

"Twenty questions," replied Warren, meaning he couldn't exactly speak freely, and there was a collective groan from the others. It always took much longer this way.

Will went first. _'Okay, in your message you said he didn't give away your real name or anything to do with us, right?'_

"Right."

'_Does the comic reveal the full extent of your powers?'_ asked Ethan.

"No. Only the first two, which is what he knew about."

'_Your appearance?' _put in Maj.

"Some features."

'_Hair streaks?'_

"Not the middle one, which is the most obvious one, so that's fine."

'_The tattoos?' _asked Kate.

"Yeah. So I'm keeping my jacket on."

Will sounded thoughtful. _'So there isn't really that much which might compromise your secret identity?'_

"No. So the obvious question is, what do we need to do about it?"

'_If we report this to the NCS, Brett will be hauled in for questioning and probably lose his license,'_ Ethan pointed out.

'_And Amber will lose her partner, which isn't really fair on her,'_ said Kate.

"No," Warren agreed. "The thing is, they make a good pair; I wouldn't wanna break that up if it's not really necessary. You could say it's the lesser of two evils, I guess."

'_Here's what I reckon,'_ said Will. _'If you see him, give him a good clout upside the head and we'll leave it at that for now.'_

Warren smirked. Yeah, he could handle carrying out that instruction, no problem.

* * *

Layla managed to finish her breakfast despite Aunt Margo's tirade, and she decided to go outside to join in on Warren's phone call with Will. After that lecture she really felt the need for some friendly conversation. 

As she passed the bathroom she spotted Keith listening at a partly open window. She went into the room in time to overhear Warren saying, "The thing is, they make a good pair; I wouldn't wanna break that up if it's not really necessary. You could say it's the lesser of two evils, I guess."

"Didn't your mother tell you it's rude to listen in to other peoples' phone calls?" she said, and Keith jumped away from the window guiltily.

"I'm just protecting my interests," he replied, rather haughtily for someone who had just been caught out. "Tell me, was there ever anything between Warren and Amber?"

Layla answered cautiously as she wondered where this conversation was going. "Yeah, they dated for a few months in high school, but it wasn't that serious."

A lot of the problem had been that during the months following Homecoming Warren had been working through his issues about Will's father and his own, which meant that he wasn't really ready for a romantic relationship at that point in his life. Much as Amber wanted to help him through that time, it was something he had to do alone and she came to respect that, and they ended up deciding to put things on hold, pretty much indefinitely.

"Yeah well, I don't think he's really over her."

Layla resisted the urge to laugh outright at that suggestion and managed to answer calmly, "Why do you think that?"

"Well, you can't deny what he was just saying about breaking me and Amber up."

"What makes you think that he's talking about _you_?"

"It's not just that. I kinda overheard them talking last night before she left."

"Making eavesdropping a bit of a habit, aren't you?" Layla forced herself to keep a reasonably neutral expression as she waited to hear how bad the security breach was.

"From what I could gather, it really sounded like he was offering to, you know, have an affair."

She breathed an inward sigh of relief that her cousin didn't overhear anything _too_ incriminating, at least as far as classified information was concerned. Still, it would be an idea to try and get Keith to stop suspecting Warren of _anything_. "But you didn't actually hear him _say_ anything improper?" she quizzed him.

Keith had the grace to look a bit embarrassed. "Uh no, but I worked it out for myself. I'm not stupid, you know, and I can see what kind of guy he is."

"That's called stereotyping, Keith," Layla replied, narrowing her eyes slightly. She was getting fed up with her extended family and their prejudices. "I suggest you drop the subject."

He looked after her in confusion as she strode out of the bathroom. He could swear that the potted plants on the window sill had just been rustling slightly, but there was definitely no breeze indoors.

* * *

After agreeing on a time to meet for lunch, the family split up to go around the theme park. Bradley took it on himself to act as tour guide for Layla and Warren, with his brother and Amber tagging along as he gave vivid descriptions of each of the rides, embellished to freak his brother out, no doubt. 

As the name suggested, GeoWorld followed an Earth Sciences theme, with all of the rides based on some sort of geological or geographical feature. There was the Earthquake Motion Simulator, Maelstrom Wave Swinger, Waterfall Log Flume and Plate Tectonics Bumper Cars, among other things.

"I can see why Zach wanted to come here," Layla said to Warren.

"What, so he could spend the day permanently terrified but pretending to be cool to impress Maj?" he replied. "Yeah, that sounds like him."

"Oh and that's one of my favorites, the Volcano of Doom." Bradley continued his guided tour, pointing to a volcano crater with a tower sticking out the top. "You sit in a gondola and it goes up through the crater to the top of the tower, and then it spins around and around until you're dizzy. Then it drops you at ludicrous speed and it stops you only just before you smash into the ground!"

Keith looked rather apprehensive about the whole idea, but Warren had another concern.

"What's with the steam coming out the top of the tower?" he asked.

"Oh, that's part of the whole 'volcano' decoration. They don't usually have so much steam though, it must be a new upgrade. Very cool!"

"Very hot actually," Warren said quietly to Layla.

"How hot?"

"Extremely hot." He gave her a significant look which indicated that he wasn't just guessing, he could sense it.

"So, what's that over there?" she asked her cousin brightly, pointing at the rollercoaster which was in the opposite direction. Everybody turned to look and Warren disappeared into the crowd. It was the oldest trick in the book, but it worked nonetheless.

A few minutes of Bradley's animated description of the Raging River Rapids Rollercoaster later, her cell phone rang. She moved a bit away from the others to answer it.

"Layla, I need you to call Will," Warren said before she could say a word. "Get him and his parents here _right now_, and you should probably get Amber and Brett to do their thing too."

"Sure. What's going on?"

"This thing's about to live up to its name. I can sense a hell of a lot of heat in here, hotter than anything I can make. I've never been to a real volcano, but I expect this is what lava is all about. And it's rising. It's already part of the way up the inside of this tower."

"Where are you exactly?"

"In the maintenance area below where the people get on the ride, through the 'Staff Only' door at the base of the volcano. But you'd better not come anywhere near here, just tell the others where to go."

Layla didn't respond to that. "Okay, I'll call the Strongholds now," she replied, hung up and called Will using the emergency ring tone.

He answered on the first ring. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Could you get yourself and your folks here ASAP, because Warren senses that this Volcano of Doom ride is about to turn into the real thing."

"A real volcano? Can Warren control that with his pyro-psionics?"

"He can sense it. I suspect he's trying to control it too."

"He's gonna kill himself," Will muttered, half to himself. "Right, be there in a few minutes."

Layla returned to the others to find Amber, Keith and Bradley discussing which ride to go on first.

It seemed that Keith was trying to get his girlfriend to go with him on the River Serenade boat ride. "I see no point in getting scared out of my mind on those thrill rides," he was saying. "Doesn't a peaceful boat trip sound much nicer?"

"Sounds boring," put in Bradley.

"No one asked you," replied his brother.

Amber practically batted her eyelids at him. "But I want to go on one of those exciting ones first, sweetie. Like the Maelstrom."

"Great idea, let's go," said Bradley.

Layla reckoned this was her cue. "Bradley, could you wait till later, please? I really want to go on that one with Amber."

She gave the cryokinetic a subtly pointed look, which she picked up straight away. "Oh yeah, it's a female bonding thing," she agreed with a very sweet smile as Layla linked arms with her in an apparently girly gesture and led her off. When they were a safe distance away, Amber stopped and turned to her with a concerned expression. "What's wrong?"

"There's a problem. Warren says someone's turned the Volcano of Doom into a real volcano."

"What?"

"He reckons there's molten rock feeding up through the center tower and pretty soon it's going to erupt."

Amber looked very worried at her news. "How could he possibly know that?

"Part of his new powers is the ability to sense fire," Layla explained.

"Lava is not the same thing as fire."

"I know, but thankfully his powers aren't that fussy. It seems to work with heat in general. Anyhow, I've called the Strongholds and they should be here in a few minutes, but I think they might appreciate some help from you guys."

"Right, I'll call Brett." Amber took out her cell phone. "Thanks, Layla."

* * *

As Layla suspected, Warren was using his pyro-psionics to try to keep the lava from rising up the column. Despite what he'd said to her, he privately suspected the temperature was not actually as high as in a real volcano. Still, the molten rock was definitely hot enough to cause a lot of damage and injury if it erupted. 

He looked up at the level above him where the gondola was being loaded up with people, and for a moment he was torn between what he was doing and the urge to go and warn them. But he knew that above all else he had to concentrate on not losing control of the building heat.

Whatever it took.

* * *

By the time Amber and Brett had evacuated the citizens from the ride that was about to start and from the surrounding area, Will had arrived. He met the two of them at the base of the volcano and they went through the 'Staff Only' door. Along the way they came across a few technicians and other employees who were obviously trying to figure out what was going on, and Will told them all sternly to evacuate. The last staff member they met was busy arguing with Layla about what exactly Warren was doing, sitting on the floor like that, and whether or not he had the authority to be in a restricted area. 

"That's irrelevant," Will stated as he overheard the last bit. "You need to get out of here right now."

The man looked at Brett and Amber, whom he evidently recognized in their superhero costumes, nodded and took off.

As he left, Simmonds said to Will, "You know, you aren't in charge here. This is our turf."

"Can you do what Warren's doing?" Will challenged.

"What _is_ he doing?"

Layla replied, "He's keeping this thing from erupting."

Brett looked quite stunned. "Whoa. I didn't know he could do that."

"Where're your parents?" Layla asked Will.

"They'll come if they can, but there's some wacko busy flooding the Australian Outback with seawater, which will probably keep them busy for quite a while."

Will's cell phone rang with the emergency ring tone. He saw it was Ethan and put him on speakerphone.

'_The satellite imagery of ground temperatures in your area confirms Warren's theory. That volcano IS going to explode pretty soon if you don't find the perp__etrator because Warren can't hold it back forever.'_

"Any idea how long we have?"

'_I don't know. I'm a doctor, not a __volcanologist.'_

Layla asked, "What about the person who's causing this? Any idea who that might be?"

'_There's only one known geokinetic with the ability to create and manipulate lava, and that's Magmaniac. He's pretty much a super-thug for hire__, generally employed for ambitious schemes only because his price is extremely high.'_

"Any known weaknesses, etc?" queried Will.

'_He has to be in contact with the lava he's creating, so you'll probably find him somewhere in the basement of the ride. That's about all I can offer you.'_

"Well, at least we have somewhere to start. Thanks." Will closed his phone and turned to Layla first. "You need to get out of here."

"No."

He ignored her response and turned to Brett. "You need a good clout for that comic book of yours, but in the meantime, keep an eye on Warren and try not to let him overdo it." Then he said to Amber, "You're with me."

"But my powers can't do much to help you," she said apologetically, "The lava will melt my ice straight away."

"Every little helps. Come on!"

They left and Layla turned her attention back to Warren. He was sitting on the ground, leaning up against the wall with his eyes closed in concentration and his fists clenched as he exerted his pyro-psionic powers on stalling the movement of the lava. What concerned her most was that he was sweating, something pyros didn't do often, and it wasn't because of the rising temperature around the tower. It was obvious that he was taking strain quite badly.

Considering how hard he was concentrating, Layla wasn't sure if he was conscious of his surroundings, but she did know that he wouldn't really want Brett Simmonds around. She looked up at the blond pyro. "I'm not leaving. You might as well go and make yourself useful."

Brett nodded a bit hesitantly and then left. Layla looked back at Warren in concern and placed a gentle hand on his arm, wishing she had more to offer than just moral support.

"You shouldn't be here," Warren murmured through clenched teeth.

"I know," Layla replied simply, giving his arm a light squeeze and he smiled slightly.

"Just do me a favor," he continued in a strained voice. "This time, don't try re-warming, just let it happen. It'll stabilize faster."

"Okay," she answered, worried. She had a horrible feeling she knew what he was talking about.

* * *

Will and Amber worked their way around the tower, looking for any sign of Magmaniac. Almost on the other side, they spotted a technician standing with his back to them at an observation window into the tower shaft. Will strode over to him quickly. 

"Hey, buddy, you need to evac–" he started to say until the man turned around and blasted him into the side of the volcano with a handful of lava.

It seemed that they had found their villain.

Amber tried to freeze him with her powers, but as she'd predicted, he simply melted any ice she threw at him. Brett came around the corner and hurled a few fireballs at him, but he barely even noticed before turning back to the observation window, which they could now see was broken open so that he could work on his lava flow up the tower.

The two heroes hurried over to where Will was picking himself up, and helped dust him off.

"Relax, I'm fine," he told them. "Just got caught off-guard." Then he noticed Brett. "What are you doing here anyway? I told you to keep an eye on Warren."

Simmonds looked a bit sullen, but he went off obediently anyway.

Will turned his attention to the super villain who was standing with his hands through the broken observation window. From the angle where he was now, Will could see through the window that glowing molten rock was moving slowly up the tower shaft at Magmaniac's command.

He flew over to the villain and tackled him to the ground, but another blast of lava threw him aside. Dodging the flying lavaballs that Magmaniac was now hurling at him constantly, Will flew in again and this time he managed to cuff the villain with a neutralizing bracelet. The man was still quite strong, and although not in the league of Will's super-strength, he continued to fight back. In the end Will had to knock him unconscious to keep him out of trouble.

Amber was watching the lava in the tower. "It's not cooling down by itself," she said. "If Warren lets go his control of it, there could still be enough heat here for it to erupt."

"Can't you do something with your powers now?" asked Will. "I mean, if Magmaniac's not actively adding to the heat, maybe you can cool it down, at least a bit?"

She looked doubtful, but she tried anyway. To her surprise, the tower started to cool down and it became easier and easier to counter-act the heat. With some effort, she began to cover the shaft with ice and they could see through the observation window that the temperature of the rock was going down.

Brett re-appeared at Will's elbow and said, "You go check on Warren. We can take it from here."

* * *

As the ice progressively covered the tower, Warren finally relaxed and unclenched his hands. He opened his eyes and shuddered suddenly, whispering one of the worst Chinese expletives he knew. 

"Headache?" Layla asked, but she suspected it was a lot more than just pain.

"Worse," he replied quietly, beginning to shiver. "Cold."

* * *

When Ethan met them at Metrocity Hospital's level 7b, the floor for super-powered patients and research, he and Layla had a short but intense argument about Warren's earlier request to allow his temperature to drop unhindered. In the end, he reluctantly agreed to it. 

It took just over half an hour for Warren's temperature to reach 98.6 and stabilize. A few minutes later his tattoos and hair streaks faded, much like the last time.

Soon after that Magenta phoned. Will told her what had happened to Warren and then put her on speakerphone.

'_The guys at MIT ran some simulations, based on the satellite photos, to see what would have happened if Warren hadn't done his thing,'_ she reported to them. _'It wouldn't have been anything like Mount St Helens, but anyone nearby would have been seriously burned. The people on the ride would probably have been killed and from the looks of things, practically everybody in the park would have had some degree of burns. Just so you don't think it was a pointless act of heroism on Warren's part.'_

"Thanks, Maj," sighed Layla. "But what was Magmaniac up to in the first place?"

'_That's a little more tricky to answer,'_ Magenta replied. _'Magmaniac's a hired thug, but there's no sign of whoever employed him.'_

Ethan agreed. "Yeah, usually there's some huge ransom demand or doomsday announcement just before one of his volcanoes goes off."

"But it didn't go off," Will pointed out. "So maybe they aborted their plans at the last minute."

Denise came into the ward, greeted them and looked over at Warren. "How's he doing?"

"Stable," replied Ethan. "He should be coming around soon. Did you find out any more about the burglary?"

"Attempted burglary," she corrected, and then explained to Will and Layla. "While you people were dealing with your volcano, someone tried to break into the DNA Vault."

'_Who'd try a stupid stunt like that?'_ wondered Magenta who was still on the speakerphone. _'I've heard it's impossible to even get past the first checkpoint.'_

"What's the DNA Vault anyway?" asked Will.

Ethan took over the explanation. "One of this hospital's specializations is genetic research of super powers. The Vault contains DNA samples of the most powerful superheroes – and villains – including your parents, Will.

"My parents? Why? What are they researching?"

"They're still trying to identify the gene or group of genes responsible for super powers. That's why inheritance of powers is so unpredictable."

"So who tried to steal DNA samples?" asked Layla, trying to get her mind on something other than worrying about Warren.

"They don't know, the thief got away," replied Denise. "But he or she got pretty far through the Vault's security system. Somehow the person managed to bypass the hand and iris scanners on three security checks. The mainframe logged a different authorized user each time.

'_That's quite impressive,'_ commented Magenta. _'Sounds like some kind of technopath or else one hell of a super-hacker. Anyhow I gotta go, chat later!'_

She hung up and the others sat in silence for a few moments.

"It's a horrible thought, but I think it was all a diversion," Ethan spoke up and they all looked at him curiously. "If the volcano had gone off like Maj's tech buddies simulated, this hospital would have been flooded with burn victims. It would have been almost easy for someone with that kind of power to sneak into the Vault while everyone was occupied with a crisis."

Warren woke up just then, which drew them from their speculation.

He looked up at the concerned faces surrounding his bed. "Did it again, didn't I?" were his first words, and Layla nodded sadly in reply. He sighed and gave her a wry half-smile. "Well, I'll try not to be such a pain in the butt this time."

* * *

"You failed!" 

Magmaniac stared sullenly at the visitor to his holding cell, a middle-aged man in a lab coat, who continued in the same harsh whisper, "I hired you to create a diversion, a huge one. The whole hospital was supposed to be mobilized to care for burn victims, instead no one got hurt at all."

"Hey, that's not fair!" the villain objected, "You never told be about some suped-up pyro who can stop a volcano or the Superman wannabe. You only told me about the ice-chick and the flamethrower."

That stopped the man short. "Wait a minute, what pyro?"

Magmaniac shrugged. "Never saw him – or them – but someone was clamping down on my lava flow, big time. I couldn't even get it up to proper temperature."

"That's unbelievable, the amount of power required to counter-act yours…"

"Yeah, so cut me a little slack, huh, doc."

Another figure entered the cell. "Don't worry, Dad. I know exactly who he is, and his friend too. And I even have a DNA sample for you."

The man took the two small sealed plastic test tubes handed to him, each with a strand of hair in it, and looked at them closely.

The labels on the test tubes had the names of the subjects, under a heading that read _Top Secret: Project Prometheus._

* * *

_**A/N:**__ Special thanks to Jeune Chat for her suggestion a while ago which inspired the crisis in this chapter, although this might not be quite the "concealed volcano of DOOM" she had in mind… ;)_


	3. Underpowered

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

**_A/N: _****_It was very kindly pointed out to me that it's a bit confusing who the villain in this chapter is, so I've added in a paragraph to explain that better, hopefully. If you've already read this chapter, that's the only thing that has changed._******

**Chapter ****3: Underpowered**

Ethan ran all of the usual tests to check on Warren's medical condition and reported that his patient was actually in a better state than when he'd just lost his powers the first time. This was possibly because of allowing his temperature to drop faster, or maybe his body was just handling it all better now.

With the immediate crisis out of the way, the next question was what to do about Layla's relatives. Her mom was covering for their absence for the moment, but sooner or later whatever excuse she'd come up with would reach its expiry date.

"So, basically the options are: one, we find some excuse to vanish back home to Maxville or, two, we waltz in there and pretend that nothing's happened," Warren surmised.

"Well, the second option's definitely out," stated Will flatly. "Last time it took a week before you could handle being at different temperatures."

"Actually," put in Ethan, "It appears that his body is already able to thermoregulate for his current temperature, most likely because it retained the memory from last time."

"So it's safe for him to leave the hospital then?" Layla asked, and Ethan nodded in response.

"That answers the question then," said Warren. "Much as I'd love an excuse to avoid the company of Aunt Margo and Keith for what's left of the weekend, it looks like I'll have to face it."

Will seemed to be getting very nervous about this development. Before he could say anything to object to the plan, Layla took him by the arm and asked, "Could we have a little chat outside, please?" She turned to the others. "Excuse us for a sec," she said before dragging Will out of the ward.

Denise gave Warren a calculating look and then she left too, while Ethan adjusted the air conditioner a few times to check that Warren could handle the changing temperature.

* * *

"I know what you're thinking," Layla said to Will when they got out into the passage, "And you've _got_ to stop being the mother hen!" 

Will didn't even bother denying his concern for his friend. "Just till he gets on his feet, then I'll back off, I promise."

"He'll be back on his feet in a few minutes' time."

"Yeah, I'm not too keen on that idea, you know."

"I noticed," she replied. "Look, Will, it has to be different this time. We really made a mistake last year, overprotecting him like that."

"A mistake? We were trying to save his life."

"And what kind of life was that?" she asked bitterly, "A life without any kind of purpose? It was the wrong thing to do. Look what happened the first time he was in a life-threatening situation – he got his powers back when he needed them."

"So you're saying we should just let him be his reckless self?"

"He's no more reckless than you are," she retorted. "And, yeah, we should let him carry on like normal. Obviously he can't do hero work, but at least let him do his cover job." Will started shaking his head and she carried on, "Please, we can't do that to him again. You have no idea what it was like for him."

"Oh, don't I?" he challenged, starting to get wound up. "I'm the one who started out at Sky High having no powers even though my parents were legendary superheroes! I know all about being powerless, Layla!"

"That's not the same thing," she shot back. "You don't know what it's like to have them and then lose them, along with all your sense of self-worth and reason for living!" She took a deep breath and went on more gently, "Please, at least let him keep his cover job."

Will sighed. "This would be much easier if his cover job wasn't quite so damn dangerous. Why couldn't he have chosen something a little safer?"

"What, like a hairdresser or ballet dancer?" she deadpanned.

It took a moment for that idea to sink in, but when it did Will had to chuckle at the mental images that came with it. She had definitely picked up Warren's sense of humor.

He looked at her and gave another sigh before nodding with a sad smile.

* * *

They came back in and Warren could see straight away that Layla had won this round for him. Denise came back in too, and she handed him a small bottle. 

"Red hair dye?" he asked after reading the label.

"It'll look a little suspicious if your streaks have suddenly disappeared," she pointed out.

"Yeah, good thinking," he replied and Ethan gave her a big hug and kiss for her brilliance while Warren, Layla and Will shared an amused three-way glance. He certainly seemed to have gotten over his shyness in the past few months they'd been a couple.

Warren held up the bottle with a wry expression.

"So … anybody know how to use this stuff?"

* * *

Layla phoned both her mom and Amber from the hospital to make sure their alibis all lined up. The best excuse Mrs. Williams had been able to come up with in a hurry was that Layla, Warren and Amber were really busy catching up on old times. It was a bit of a weak story, so it was a good thing that when Warren and Layla arrived back at Aunt Margo's house everybody's attention was captured by the Volcano of Doom incident on the news, which meant they were able to slip in without an immediate cross-examination. 

Amber had sounded quite concerned about Warren, but Layla reassured her that he would be fine and it was just a bad power reaction. She didn't tell her that he'd lost his powers; that was something the Guardians kept among themselves. It wasn't that Layla didn't trust the cryokinetic, it was more her partner she was concerned about.

Layla's mother greeted Warren with a sympathetic expression for both his state of exhaustion and his friends' handiwork on his hair. The impromptu hairdressing session had turned out to be highly amusing, or maybe it was just because they were a bit light-headed from the stress that made it seem more funny than it usually would have been. Either way, they were all glad that the dye would wash out in a day or two.

Warren glanced over at the TV, where Brett and Amber were describing the day's events as vaguely as possible, carefully not making any mention of Warren or Will's involvement. If that got out, it could raise some very awkward questions about what two of Maxville's heroes were doing so far from home and just conveniently happened to show up when there was a crisis. When the news item was over, the Tylers finally noticed that Warren and Layla had returned. Aunt Margo and Keith responded by giving them the cold shoulder for being anti-social for most of the day, not that it was really much of a punishment for them. Bradley seemed to be thinking seriously about something, and he gave Warren a long look before going upstairs.

He came back down a few minutes later, by which time Warren and Layla were the only ones left in the living room. They were sitting on the couch and Warren had his eyes closed, wondering how soon he could go to sleep without arousing suspicion.

Bradley sat down on the opposite couch and commented in an apparently casual tone, "You know, despite being the good guys, superheroes don't seem to have a problem with telling a whole pack of lies."

Warren opened his eyes and tried to pretend to be awake while Layla answered carefully, "Well, there are times when they need to hide the truth, to protect their secret identities or one another or to keep people safe, especially their families and friends."

"Yeah?" replied Bradley, not convinced. "Well, Freeze-Woman and Fire-Man were definitely lying on the news. I just looked up Magmaniac on the internet and he can create lava _much _faster than he did today. He can make a volcano out of nothing and have it erupt in less than an hour."

"You can't trust everything you read on the internet," she reasoned, "In any case, they got to him before he could set it off."

"I think they had some help," said Bradley pointedly.

He was looking straight at Warren, who returned his stare with slightly raised eyebrows. "Why are you looking at me like you think I had something to do with it?"

"Well, you asked about the steam, which was because of what Magmaniac was doing, as it turns out, and then you disappeared for the rest of the day, and now you look like you're exhausted, as if you've just been battling a volcano."

"Right, and I'm actually your favorite hero Knight-Fire in disguise," answered Warren in that teasing, condescending tone that adults often use when responding to the imaginations of children. It actually works far better for protecting secret identities than it does with kids.

"Really?" asked Bradley eagerly.

"No."

"It's okay, you can trust me. I won't tell anyone, I swear."

"Still no."

"Okay, then what about the tattoos on your wrists?"

Warren froze. "What tattoos?" he asked after a moment, pulling up one of his sleeves.

"But, but I saw, last night when you'd just arrived, you had these red fiery tattoos, just like Knight-Fire's. I don't know why I didn't make the connection straight away."

Warren thought quickly. "You know those temporary tattoos you can get?"

Bradley's face fell. "Oh, is that what they were?"

"Yeah, more to freak out your mother than anything else."

"So then why did you take them off while you still have more chances to bug her?"

Damn, but the kid was smart. "They were starting to come off anyway," Warren replied, mildly impressed at his own inventiveness. "Sorry you got your hopes up for nothing."

"That's all right," Bradley said in a small voice, disappointed, and then he perked up again, "But I still think they had help, and I still think it was Knight-Fire!"

* * *

During the next few weeks it would help a lot to know that he had such a devoted fan. 

After the first five days of bed rest ordered by Ethan in order for him to get his strength back properly, Warren hoped the worst would be over. He was able to go back to work with a minimum of paranoia from Will, and he'd even managed to get away with not having some agents from Under The Radar trailing him the whole time to make sure he was safe.

Now all he needed was to get his powers back, preferably a little sooner than last time. But life is never that simple, and his first week back at work ended in frustration. The next week went much the same, with a number of occasions when his powers would have helped him and the other firefighters a lot, and probably prevented some victims' minor injuries too. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt as a result of his powerlessness, but things were a lot more difficult for him than they usually were.

Still, at least he could prove to Stronghold that he was quite capable of doing his day job without his powers.

* * *

Nicola was starting to settle in at Sky High. It was nice not having to worry about keeping her powers a secret all the time and the other sophomores had stopped treating her like the new kid. Her other social problem was the status-seekers who wanted her in their social circle because of her association with Warren & Co., but she'd still managed to make a few genuine friends. 

One of them was Meredith, her Mad Science lab partner. Despite a slightly rocky start, their friendship had progressed beyond sharing a lunch table and class notes, and gone as far as hanging out at the mall together.

It was late one afternoon and they had just finished window-shopping and were heading out to the parking garage where Meredith's mom was going to fetch them. As they crossed the bridge between the mall and the garage, Nicola spotted Warren heading in their direction.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, considering she was reasonably sure that Meredith wouldn't embarrass her completely by suddenly going all fan-girl about meeting her cousin. But the fact that Warren had lost his powers was strictly confidential, and with her friend's ability to sense the powers of anyone in her line of sight, there was no way Nicola could let her see him, and find out.

"Isn't that your mom's car over there?" she said, waving vaguely at the parked vehicles a few rows away from where Warren was, and dragged her off in that direction without waiting for an answer.

Meredith seemed to be a bit taken aback by her odd behavior, and she allowed herself to be led along for a couple of minutes before speaking up, "Actually, my mom usually parks on that side."

She was about to turn and point when Nicola managed to draw her attention to a sports car nearby. "Isn't that a beauty? I can't wait till I'm old enough to drive."

"I somewhat doubt that your parents will be buying you one for your birthday, especially not one like that."

Nicola glanced quickly over her shoulder to check that her cousin was out of sight and gave a dramatic sigh, "Oh well, a girl can dream, can't she?"

Her friend was looking at her a bit strangely by this stage, and she realized she was going to have to pay a lot more attention to her Acting Natural & Avoiding Suspicion classes. Her best hope to fix this was to just follow Meredith towards her mother's car and hope she forgot about it.

As they rounded one of the thick concrete pillars, strange behavior and sports cars was suddenly the last thing on their minds. A man dressed in black appeared abruptly and cornered them between the pillar and the next parked car, a large RV.

"Pyrokinetic," said Meredith out of the corner of her mouth.

"Yeah, I guessed that much," Nicola murmured back. The man had a flame tattoo down the side of his face, and there was something familiar about him, and not just the fact that his bearing reminded her unpleasantly of the Battle family.

"Hello, Helen," he said, using her birth name. "I was hoping to run into you." His tone that suggested this meeting was planned rather than hoped.

"Who are you?" asked Nicola, trying to stall for time. She knew he wouldn't be able to hurt her with his powers, but he could burn Meredith. She wondered if Warren was still somewhere nearby – but no, he'd been heading in the opposite direction.

"Oh dear, how rude of me. I am Incendiary," he announced with a mock bow. "My son mentioned you quite often … until he was arrested, thanks to you."

"Dorian?" she guessed and the man nodded. That explained the familiarity. That probably also explained what this was all about – she'd learnt that week in Understanding The Super Villain Mind that they often had an unhealthy preoccupation with revenge.

Soon after Nicola started at Maxville High the previous year, one of the other students had tried to taunt her into using her powers, to the point of setting fire to their classroom, which had resulted in her meeting her cousin for the first time and Dorian getting busted. She'd later found out that Dorian was part of a mafia family of pyrokinetics who were after her for her powers, which had ultimately led to a dramatic raid by the Guardians which crushed the family. So, on both accounts, she would not be terribly popular with the villain standing in front of her.

"Well, I'm sorry, but it really wasn't my fault he went psycho and tried to burn down the lab."

That probably was not the wisest thing to have said. Incendiary powered up with a roar, Meredith gave a piercing shriek and Nicola absorbed his fire almost instantly. The villain powered up again and this time she absorbed the flames so fast they weren't even visible. His third attempt turned out exactly the same.

So far so good, but how long could she keep this up? Surely someone had heard Meredith's scream and would call 911 or something?

* * *

Warren had known it was unlikely that the bank at the mall would still be open this late in the afternoon, but he thought he'd try anyway on his way home from work. As he'd suspected, it turned out that it had closed half an hour ago. 

He quickly made his way back to his car and was almost there when he heard a girl scream. With his hero complex in gear as always, he headed over to where he reckoned the sound had come from, and spotted two girls being menaced by a man dressed in black. As he got closer he realized that one of the girls was his cousin. He couldn't see much of the aggressor who had his back to him.

That also meant that Warren had the element of surprise. He grabbed the man by the shoulder and hooked his foot around his ankle, throwing him hard onto his back. It was difficult to tell for sure which of them was more stunned at who they saw.

"Incendiary?"

"Warren? Aren't you supposed to be dead or something?"

The villain started to get up and Warren stood heavily on his wrist, knowing that the pyro's invulnerability would prevent any serious harm, while taking his Zippo out of his pocket. Behind his back he flipped open the hidden panel with his thumb nail and pressed the alarm button.

Incendiary powered up with the other hand and threw a fireball at the leg that was trapping him on the ground. With Warren's jeans being fireproof it didn't hurt him anymore than if he had his invulnerability, and he took his weight off the villain's wrist in order to kick him through the face, which only put him out of action temporarily.

Now would be a _very_ nice time to get his powers back.

But, no such luck.

From where he was still lying on the ground, Incendiary threw a fireball at Warren who turned his back slightly so that his fireproof jacket took the brunt of it. In spite of that, some of it had evidently found a gap between his jacket and jeans because he could feel a burn searing his side. He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to show he was in pain. In that time the villain got to his feet but when he powered up, Nicola quickly stole his fire.

Incendiary evidently thought that was Warren's doing. "Is that all? I'm disappointed. I'd heard your abilities were quite impressive these days."

Warren improvised. "I know the concept of secret identity doesn't mean much to you people," he replied in a stage whisper, "But to us it's like life or death."

The villain glanced around and noticed that their scuffle had attracted some onlookers, not that anyone was in a hurry to offer assistance. He grinned, positive that he had the advantage now, and threw two fireballs in quick succession which Warren ducked. One of them hit the concrete pillar while the other struck a nearby car. Nicola swiftly absorbed the fire before it could spread.

Warren gave her a quick glance and saw that she was starting to show signs of overheating, so he shook his head at her to tell her not to use her powers anymore. She looked defiant as he turned his attention back to his adversary.

Fortunately the decision was taken out of their hands by the high-speed arrival of Will in response to Warren's alarm activation. He knocked Incendiary unconscious and cuffed him with a neutralizer, and then cheerfully gave Warren a handshake, making it appear to the gathered citizens that he had been simply a concerned citizen doing his civic duty. The action jarred the burn on his side and he winced slightly. Will saw his reaction despite his effort to hide it and narrowed his eyes in an expression that promised a whole lot of chewing out later.

Turning to the rubberneckers, Will waved congenially and told them that the show was over before picking up Incendiary and flying off. Evidently he also reported Warren's injury because a few moments later the Guardian van arrived. Ethan stuck his head out of the back and beckoned him with a less than impressed expression.

Warren turned to Nicola, who looked like she was having a little trouble breathing, and said, "You as well."

She nodded and followed him into the back of the van, which had been hastily rigged as an infirmary. Meredith trailed after them and slipped in too without anyone really noticing. Warren insisted that Ethan take a look at his cousin first.

"You've tried to absorb too much fire," the doctor told her.

"I know," she replied, "But I'm afraid that I'll lose control of it if I try to release it."

"Not to worry, we've had this problem with your cousin before," said Ethan with a gentle smile, seeing that she was really afraid of causing damage with her powers, something she hadn't feared since Warren helped her learn to control them the previous year.

Putting on some heavy gloves, he placed a block of dry ice in a wide basin and then poured hot water from a canteen over it, which caused it to rapidly form a small cloud of vapor. He instructed her to hold her hands in the cold vapor and power up. As she did so, the cold carbon dioxide gas quenched most of the fire and she was able to expend the heat without incident.

With that taken care of, Ethan turned his attention to Warren, who suddenly noticed his cousin's companion.

Nicola followed his glance and made introductions. "Warren, this is my lab partner and friend, Meredith. She's a power sensor."

Warren raised his eyebrows curiously and Ethan looked impressed. "Really?"

"I can only sense the powers of people I can see," she explained as Ethan worked on dressing Warren's injury. "When the Guardians saved the City from those flying mutant frogs during the summer break I saw you in person for the first time, and I sensed that you're a fire elemental. Although, I think there's something weird going on, because right now your powers appear to be latent."

"Latent?" repeated Warren.

"Yeah, it's like I once sensed the future powers of a kid who hadn't got them yet. That's what it feels like."

"Stands to reason," he replied but he didn't elaborate further.

Meredith narrowed her eyes and asked shrewdly, "Has something happened to your powers?"

Warren sighed. "I kinda overdid things a little a few weeks ago and I lost my powers, again."

Ethan just shook his head in exasperation at his understatement and Nicola rolled her eyes. She'd heard from Will and Layla all about what Warren had done with that volcano.

"So this has happened before?" asked Meredith.

"Yeah, last year. And then I got them back during a crisis six months later."

"Oh, that must be the time when you were 'dead'," she realized.

"It seems to be some kind of power burnout," Ethan expained. "It's like his powers need a time-out to rest and recover."

"Though I don't understand why I didn't get them back today when I needed them, like the way they came back last time," said Warren with a frown.

"Maybe you just haven't had enough downtime yet," suggested Ethan.

"Or maybe you didn't need them badly enough," Meredith said.

Warren shot her a skeptical look. "Oh, believe me, I needed them."

"You still managed to take care of him until Will arrived," Nicola pointed out. "Even though you got a bit hurt."

"Largely thanks to _your_ help," he replied.

"Exactly!" exclaimed Meredith excitedly and they all looked at her a bit blankly. "Maybe it needs to be a truly last-hope situation, where your powers would be the _only_ way you would be able to save a person's life or something."

That made a lot of sense. When he thought back to the times when his powers had developed, it had been in situations where there was no other way to save the day. And, of course, there was the classic example of Stronghold gaining his mother's power of flight when Royal Pain hurled him over the edge of the school.

So … last-chance, life-or-death situation.

Layla and Will were going to just _love_ that.


	4. Changeling

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

_**A/N:**__ I should mention that I've taken some liberties with the science of genetics in this story – so, apologies to the purists, and to those who know better, but this is science __**fiction**__ after all…._

**Chapter ****4: Changeling**

Late one night, about ten weeks after the volcano incident, Layla woke to see Warren sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her, taking his boots off. Evidently he'd just got home from bowling with Will.

"Hey, how did it go?" she greeted him sleepily.

"Cool," he replied without turning around. "I kicked his butt."

That was curious, she thought with a slight frown. Usually their scores were quite close. She was about to ask what was wrong with Will when one of his arms came into her view and she couldn't help noticing the pyro tattoo on his wrist.

He had got his powers back!

She gave a wry smile as she wondered what sort of catastrophe he'd walked into this time in order to power up again. To be fair, though, it wasn't like he'd spent the past six weeks _looking_ for dangerous situations, something she'd been afraid of ever since she'd heard about Meredith's last-chance-life-or-death-scenario theory. It seemed that Warren had got quite a scare from his run-in with Incendiary when his powers didn't return automatically at a time he thought the situation demanded it, and the fact that he'd got hurt also helped to make him more cautious. So, actually there was a good chance that this had been a legitimate crisis.

"Anything else interesting happen?" she asked playfully.

"Uh, no." His reply was almost defensive.

Layla reached over to touch his tattooed wrist in order to make her point, and then suddenly pulled back as she realized that something wasn't quite right. Even without actually touching him she could tell that his body temperature was still normal human level, nowhere near high enough for a pyro.

And yet he had the tattoos. This was starting to get very odd.

Fortunately, with his back to her, he didn't see her aborted gesture. She slid out of bed and quickly pulled her robe over her nightgown.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Just going to the bathroom, lovey-dove," Layla replied lightly, trying to make her voice sound normal despite her growing concern. There was no reaction to being called something so sappy, which only added to her suspicion.

Staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, Layla tried to force herself to breathe normally as she mentally ran through the possibilities of what might be going on. She thought back to when she'd watched the security footage of herself under Hypnotic's control, and remembered what the others had suggested was wrong with her… alien parasite… shape-shifter… evil twin… and of course, there was always the possibility of more mind control drugs…

She took a deep breath and went back to the bedroom with a quick detour to fetch something from her purse. One of those options was quite easy to test, as Kate had pointed out at the time, and if her guess was wrong, at least he wouldn't be able to hurt her with his powers.

With her bedside plant under her control and ready to attack, she went straight up to him and snapped the neutralizing bracelet she'd fetched from her purse around his wrist. Before he could even finish morphing back into himself, she had him completely immobilized and strung upside down from the light fitting in honeysuckle.

Layla activated her alarm to call the rest of the Guardians and went into the living room to open the balcony door so that Will could fly right in. She took another slow breath and returned to the bedroom, glaring at the captive shape-shifter who was struggling to escape from the cocoon without success.

"Just be grateful it's not poison ivy," she snapped coldly. "What are you doing here and _where is Warren_?"

Jerry Holme, a.k.a. Carbon Copy Kid, gave her a leer as best he could from his current position. "So you finally figured it out after all these months. Well, you enjoyed it while it lasted, didn't you?"

Layla's breath caught in her throat as her brain briefly considered the possibility that he might be telling the truth, before completely discarding the notion. There was no way he could have been masquerading as her husband any longer than the past few minutes. He was just trying to mess with her head.

"I only did it because I'm in love with you," the shape-shifter continued, "It's the only way I would have had a chance with you."

She rolled her eyes and muttered one of Warren's favorite Chinese expletives. She wasn't entirely sure what it meant and her accent was probably horrible, but she was pretty sure it wasn't _too_ bad, and besides it helped her to get her anger under control a bit. If she didn't calm down very soon she might just give in to the temptation to do nasty things to the intruder using the thorny rosebush on the windowsill…

Fortunately at that point the others arrived.

"Where's Will?" Layla asked as she let them in the door.

They looked confused. "I would have thought he'd be here first," said Ethan.

* * *

Warren's first thought on groggily returning to consciousness was that he was going to kill Stronghold for taking advantage of his lack of powers to get him drunk. Alcohol had a minimal effect on pyros because it just burned up thanks to their high body temperature, along with all kinds of germs, bacteria and viruses. However, without his powers, he had a pretty low tolerance, as they'd discovered on New Years' the previous year when his so-called friends had managed to get him, well, extremely mellow. The next morning, he'd felt a lot like he did at the moment, and it had taken almost a week for him to forgive Stronghold, the main instigator of his suffering. 

But, as the memories came back to him in a hazy sequence, he remembered that he couldn't actually put the blame for his current misery on Will, who possibly felt as awful as he did.

Stronghold had phoned him in the afternoon, from a payphone for some reason, to invite him to go bowling after dinner. They'd met in the parking lot next to the bowling alley and were going in when they spotted a little girl on her own, crying. It was dark by then so, being the permanently-on-duty heroes that they were, they'd gone over to her to ask if she was lost or something, and could they take her home.

After that, his memories were a bit jumbled. As far as he could remember, they were jumped from behind by a group of super-strong ninjas armed with heavy power-neutralizing restraints and some sort of anesthetic drug. Actually, it was quite embarrassing how easily they'd been taken down. It was the old thing of being caught off-guard and without the backup they were so accustomed to.

"Warren?" groaned Will, sounding like he _did_ feel as bad as him.

"Mmm?"

"Have you opened your eyes yet?"

"Can't face it."

"You'd better."

With a lot of effort he forced his eyes open. He could see straight away why Will thought he needed to see this.

They were in a huge room with a high ceiling and blank walls, possibly underground. There was a large mirror at one end which was almost definitely one-way glass, and there appeared to be a door in the perpendicular wall, not far from where they were. The two of them were surrounded by four octagonal pillars made of a dark metal, and there were more arranged in a uniform grid of about four yards apart, throughout the room.

Will got to his feet a little unsteadily and headed towards the door, but when he tried to walk between two of the columns, he abruptly came into contact with some sort of invisible wall and he jumped back in pain. For a moment they could see a shimmering in the air, like heat haze, between the columns. Will cautiously tested the spaces between the adjacent columns on either side while Warren did the same for the gap nearest him, which showed that the four nearest pillars were the corners of a cage around them. The invisible force fields made effective sidewalls, delivering a painful jolt, almost like an electric shock, on contact.

Rubbing his sore fingers, Warren caught sight of a broad metal bracelet around his right wrist, and he pushed up his jacket sleeve to take a closer look. At first he thought it might be some kind of neutralizing restraint, considering it was solid metal and evidently opened by biometric scanner only, but neutralizers weren't usually personalized. There was a raised panel which was engraved with his name and listed his powers, and next to each one on the list there was a small light which was off. He glanced over at Will and saw that he was wearing one too, and the lights on his were off too. So, evidently whatever it was, it wasn't able to tell that he didn't have his powers. There was also a keypad of sorts on the panel and some other button controls.

A man in a lab coat entered the door carrying a PC tablet on which he was making notes. He was probably in his fifties, with slightly graying hair and beard, and an air of intelligence.

"Don't worry, gentlemen, the effects of the drug will wear off shortly and you will soon be feeling your normal selves again."

"Actually, I'm feeling a lot better already, thanks," said Will sarcastically, pulling back his fist to punch out the nearest pillar. As he did so, a look of excited anticipation came over the face of their captor, and Warren grabbed Stronghold's arm before he could do anything. "What?"

"Don't do that. It's what he wants."

Will dropped his arm and looked at the man. "Who are you and what's going on here?"

"I am Dr. Percival Shelley," answered the scientist. "Welcome to the Prometheus Project, gentlemen."

"Prometheus?" Will asked.

"Ancient Greek guy, I think," said Warren.

Dr. Shelley gave a slight smile. "According to legend, Prometheus was the titan who stole fire from the gods and gave its secret to man, thus beginning man's enlightenment and civilization."

"Uh huh?" replied Will. "And how does this relate to us?"

"Like Prometheus, I intend to steal the secret of fire from you."

"How?" asked Warren suspiciously.

"Your DNA. As your more intellectual colleagues may have told you, the gene responsible for superpowers has not yet been located, despite years of research. My theory is that the location varies from person to person, but that there must be an overall predictable pattern."

Warren cleared his throat. "Could we cut through the technobabble and get to the part about _us_?" he suggested quite sarcastically. "Sorry if that sounds a bit self-centered."

Shelley was unfazed by his tone, and continued calmly, "You are the final step in my experiment. I thought I had all I would need when I received a DNA sample for each of you from my protégé, who happens to be moonlighting as a superhero here in Metrocity. But after research on those samples failed, I came to the conclusion that it needs to be activated in order for the pattern to become clear. In other words, this can't be done on a microscope slide. I need my subjects to power up in order for me to see which genes are involved – a strange quirk that has never been recorded in genetic research to date, but there you have it. It would certainly explain why conventional science has not been able to locate the 'super' gene yet."

"So I'm guessing this is where the bracelets come in?" said Will, gesturing with his right wrist.

"Yes, I have spent the past two months designing those. They are highly advanced biosensors which will record exactly which genes are activated by which of your powers."

The two heroes exchanged a glance. The scientist evidently was under the impression that Warren had his powers. Apparently the lack of pyro tattoos hadn't tipped him off.

Will had a sudden thought. "You were the one who tried to break into the DNA Vault."

"Yes, that was another of my assistants. You see, some time ago I was banned from the Vault and the other official resources of this hospital on account of my methods being too … extreme. Fortunately, there are those among the National Council of Superheroes who, like me, believe that an overdose of morals and ethics can stand in the way of scientific progress, and so I was allowed to continue my work down here, in secret. But, whatever the powers that be might think of my practices, I am not cruel. I am willing to make a very fair deal: power up and give me the information I need, and you can go."

"Yeah, right," Warren muttered.

"Quick question, Doc," said Will. "What are you planning to _do_ with the info? Somehow I don't think this is all for a Nobel Prize."

"Or for the good of mankind, like the original Prometheus," added Warren.

"Oh, this _is_ for the good of mankind, ultimately," replied Shelley, getting quite excited now. "The human race is a mess; you can't deny that. The only solution to the madness of wars and greed is for there to be a higher authority governing the entire planet, and the only way that authority is going to be enforced is for their agents to be more powerful than everybody else, even the super-powered people. So once I know the genes for your powers I will be able to extrapolate for all kinds of powers and we will be able to engineer a league of super protectors who will make this world a safe place for all."

Will and Warren shared a concerned look as he carried on waxing lyrical about his grand scheme. For all Dr. Shelley had appeared at first to be perfectly lucid, he was now proving himself to be just as unhinged as the average mad scientist trying to take over the world, whatever his motivation.

* * *

They all looked out the open balcony door for a moment, as if expecting Will to come flying in. Kate took out her phone and dialed his number using the emergency ring tone. While she was waiting for a response, Ethan asked what was going on and Layla led them into the bedroom to see for themselves. 

"What the hell's _he_ doing here?" asked Magenta and then she realized what the shape-shifter had been up to and gave him a glare. "Bottom-feeding scumbag."

"Will's not answering," reported Kate, looking worried as she hung up. "Absolutely nothing keeps him from answering a distress call." She glared at Holme. "So, where are they?"

"Where are who?" he replied. "What makes you think Stronghold's got anything to do with this?"

"Don't bother," said Layla to Kate. "We're not going to get a straight answer out of him."

Holme made an extremely unpleasant comment about Layla that caused her to blush and Magenta to give him a hefty whack across the jaw. Ethan took a syringe out of his medical bag and sedated the shape-shifter before he could cause any more trouble. When he was safely unconscious Layla released him from the honeysuckle, dumping him less than gently on the floor.

Maj took out her PDA. "Neither of their location beacons is giving a signal, which means that they've either been destroyed or they're out of range."

Layla looked at the bedside clock. It read 12:53, much later than she'd realized. "He left soon after 8 to go bowling with Will. That's nearly five hours ago."

"They could be almost anywhere by now, even out of the country if their captors have got a fast enough aircraft," said Ethan.

Meanwhile Kate was on her phone again. "Hi Josie, sorry to wake you. Could you fly over here to Warren and Layla's place quickly? … Is he awake? … No, please don't wake him, rather just come by yourself … See you soon, bye." She hung up and asked Layla a bit hesitantly, "By the way, how did you work out he wasn't really Warren?"

"A couple of little things. Mostly because he had the tattoos, as if Warren had got his powers back, but not the body temperature for a pyro."

"But why did he have the tattoos when he morphed into Warren when the real Warren doesn't?" asked Ethan.

"Well, evidently he can't just mimic whoever he sees," said Magenta.

"Or touches, like the T-1000," put in Zach.

Maj continued, "It's more like he shifts into whatever he _perceives_ the person to be. And Warren was no doubt wearing his jacket so he couldn't see that he didn't have the tattoos."

"Which means that whoever Holme is working for, they probably don't know that Warren doesn't have his powers," remarked Ethan.

Just then Josie flew in the open balcony door. "What's happened?"

They showed her their unconscious captive. "He's a shape-shifter," explained Ethan. "He tried to pretend he was Warren."

Josie went over to Layla and gave her a comforting hug. "Oh, honey, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, thanks. I worked it out quite quickly."

"So somebody's kidnapped Warren." Josie said and turned to Kate. "This is very serious. Why did you ask me to not bring Steve?"

"Because Will's missing too." Josie reacted with understandable shock, and Kate went on with her explanation. "Holme wasn't being very helpful and I'm afraid Steve might just rip him limb from limb to get him to talk."

"Tempting," commented Maj as an aside to Layla.

"You're right. He probably would," admitted Josie to Kate, and then she sighed, looking as worried as the rest of them. "Not that I'd really blame him for wanting to. Do you know _anything_ about where Will and Warren might be?"

"At the moment, Holme is our only lead," Ethan replied.

"More like a dead end, man," said Zach gloomily, giving the unconscious shape-shifter a sharp nudge with his foot.

Ethan had to agree. "It's going to be very difficult getting any information out of him at all. It will be pointless trying to use any kind of threats because he's got no need to be afraid of us."

Josie nodded. "Because we're the good guys, we can't do anything to hurt him in any way."

"Yeah, and the trouble is, he knows that," said Magenta.

* * *

"Okay, so we know we're in Metrocity then," said Will. "What else?" 

Dr. Shelley had left them soon after he'd finished his taking-over-the-world-for-its-own-good monologue, and they were trying to work out if they'd learnt anything useful from the conversation.

They were sitting with their backs to the one-way glass panel. As far as they could tell, there was no other surveillance equipment in the room, which sometimes happened in covert facilities where there was a danger of someone from outside tapping into the security camera network and finding evidence of what was going on.

Warren added, "From the sounds of things, somewhere underground beneath the hospital."

"I can't believe Brett Simmonds would sell out to the bad guys like this," commented Will with a frown.

"Look, the doc said his 'protégé' is a Metrocity superhero who was close enough to us to take a DNA sample a bit over two months ago, and there's only one other person who fits that description. You don't think it's her, do you?"

"Amber? No, of course not. I just meant that, you know, Simmonds is a real jerk but I wouldn't think he'd go that far."

"Guess he's more of a jerk than we realized. Alternatively he might also be delusional enough to think this plan is for the 'good of mankind'." He glanced over and noticed that Will seemed to be trying to get a hand-hold on his biosensor bracelet. "What are you doing?"

"Look, it'll only take a split second to rip this thing off and then – "

He was cut off mid-sentence by Warren pulling a neutralizer out of some hidden pocket of his jacket and snapping it around his left wrist.

"And in that split second, you could give him all the information he needs."

Will sighed and reluctantly agreed. He took the neutralizer off his wrist and put it around his ankle instead where it would be hidden from the scientist's view under his jeans.

"So, you just happened to be carrying one of these things around with you to go bowling?"

Warren shrugged. "Since the fight with Incendiary, I carry one everywhere these days." Not that it had helped much when they'd been attacked by Shelley's ninjas.

Will punched the nearest pillar in frustration and instantly regretted it. "Man, I hate this not being able to use my powers!" he exclaimed, rubbing his sore hand.

"Welcome to my world," replied Warren quietly.


	5. Better the devil you know

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

**Chapter ****5: Better the devil you know **

Jerry Holme fought against the fog of unconsciousness that was trying to keep him a prisoner. Eventually he was able to open his eyes, although he had trouble keeping them from shutting again. In a series of slow blinks he managed to take in enough of his surroundings to work out where he was. A few minutes later his head felt less fuzzy and he could plot his escape properly.

He was in an isolation ward, on level 4a of Maxville Hospital, from the looks of things. There was a drip running into his left arm and he was strapped to a bed with restraints around his wrists and ankles. He didn't appear to have any form of neutralizing restraint… but the whole room was probably neutralized. Still, it was worth a try, and to his surprise he was able to shape-shift into a small girl who lived on his block, slipping his wrists and ankles easily out of the restraints as he did so. For a moment he just couldn't believe that the heroes had been so stupid as to leave him alone without neutralizing his powers. Most likely they were relying on their anesthetic drug to keep him unconscious, and apparently they'd underestimated the dosage he'd need.

Then he caught sight of the security camera in the corner and he heard heavy footsteps approaching. Obviously they were keeping an eye on him, which meant that they weren't quite as stupid as he'd hoped, unfortunately. Oh well, he would just have to be more careful.

He shifted into Stronghold's friend, Ethan Franklin, the only doctor he knew of at this hospital, just as the security forces opened the door. "The prisoner's gone!" he told them. "Search the whole floor, he could be anywhere."

The guards obediently left the ward and split up to search. Jerry took a good look at one of them and morphed into him as soon as he was out of sight. He walked out into the corridor but he quickly realized that if he wanted to blend with the crowd properly he would need to look like one of the hospital personnel.

This had been a whole lot easier at Metrocity Hospital where he'd had a chance to familiarize himself with the layout, the staff, their names and schedules. Still, he was a resourceful guy, and he reckoned he was good at improvisation. He had no idea how the hippie had figured it out so quickly though; he thought he'd done a pretty decent imitation of the bad boy pyro. Not that it really mattered now – he'd fulfilled his mission to cover for the disappearance of the two heroes for a few hours, and now it was time to return to his employer to collect the other half of his fee.

Passing behind a large potted plant, he shifted into a nurse he'd just seen heading in the opposite direction but then a doctor headed towards him in the corridor, seeming to be trying to get his attention. He pretended not to notice and turned quickly into a ward. This turned out to be a bad idea when the woman in the nearest bed, taking him for the nurse he was impersonating, launched into a detailed description of something about the female anatomy that was just way too much information, but he managed to find an excuse to escape before he got totally weirded out.

Before leaving the ward, however, he ducked behind the opposite bed which had its privacy curtains closed, and emerged as a cleaner from Metrocity Hospital who he had mimicked once before. As a general rule, people don't take any notice of the cleaning staff, so nobody questioned what he was doing in the wrong hospital. The security guards who were searching for him walked straight past without even glancing in his direction.

After taking a few wrong turns, Jerry finally managed to find the elevator. To operate the biometric scanner he had to shift into someone who had a legitimate reason to be here, so he randomly picked a doctor he had seen earlier, hoping that the real one wouldn't appear while he was waiting for the elevator to arrive. The doors opened and some more security forces came out. Jerry waited for them to pass, nodded pleasantly at a few who looked his way and got in. Being the only person in the elevator as it went downwards, he morphed into a person he knew from New York and then walked calmly through the reception area and out of the front door of the hospital.

Easy as pie.

These heroes were _such_ idiots!

* * *

"8 minutes, 43 seconds."

Magenta turned from the monitor to her boyfriend triumphantly. "Pay up."

Zach gave an exaggerated sigh and handed over the money for betting that Holme would take longer than 10 minutes to escape.

Layla was less amused. "We're taking an awful risk letting him go. This had better work."

"Worked on Star Wars," shrugged Zach.

"So did the Force," Kate pointed out sarcastically.

Maj tried to reassure them. "Look, he shifted seven times and the isotope Ethan injected him with showed up on the scanner the whole way through. Don't worry, girls, we can trace him whatever form he's in."

"Besides, it's not like we could have got any information out of him if we'd kept him locked up," Ethan remarked.

There was a lot of truth in that.

"How long until the isotope wears off?" asked Layla.

"Between 26 and 28 hours," replied Denise, "Less the half hour it took for him to come round from the anesthetic and his nine minute tour of the Hospital. So pretty much until about 10 or 12 tomorrow."

"Is that all? That doesn't give us much time."

"Well, that's why it was so important that we make him think he's won," said Ethan. "If we'd just released him, he would probably hide out for a while, _expecting_ us to be following him."

"If he doesn't lead us to wherever Warren and Will are in that time, we can just pick him up and give him another shot," added Magenta.

"Looks like he's a bit confused about where he's going, man," commented Zach, looking at the monitor. The dot representing Holme kept changing direction through the streets.

Kate watched for a few moments and then said, "He's probably just doubling back on himself to check he's not being followed."

As they watched, Holme went into Maxville Central Train Station, where they assumed he was fetching some things from a locker which he'd probably stashed there before beginning his masquerade as Warren. It appeared that included his car keys, as he went into the station parking lot and drove off. After some more erratic direction changes through the morning traffic, he finally seemed to decide there wasn't anyone following him. He was heading out of town when Josie stopped by Ethan's office.

"Any news yet?" she asked anxiously.

"Well, he's on the move, so we're hoping he's going to lead us somewhere useful," replied Ethan.

"Where's he headed?"

"West out of Maxville," answered Magenta. "He'll be out of range soon, so we'd better start following."

"Wait a minute," said Josie. "You people can't just go off and leave Maxville unprotected. What if something happens? Maybe it would be better if Steve and I go to rescue them."

"But if something big happens here, we won't be able to handle it without Will and Warren anyway," Kate pointed out.

"That could even be what this is all about," realized Denise. "Somebody could be planning a huge crime here, and they kidnapped the two of them to get them out of the way."

Layla turned to Josie. "I know this is asking an awful lot, but what we really need is for you and Steve to protect Maxville while it's so vulnerable."

Josie seemed to be struggling between her roles as superhero and Will's mother, but finally she sighed. "Yes, I see your point, but I don't think Steve will agree."

"So don't tell him," advised Magenta without taking her eyes off the monitor.

"You want me to lie to my husband?"

Layla, remembering something her cousin Bradley said, replied with uncharacteristic sarcasm, "Why not? We're superheroes, we tell lies all the time."

"Not usually to our spouses about where our children are," Josie answered, and then she sighed again. "All right then. Any ideas what I should tell him then?"

Kate said, "How about that Will phoned and asked if the two of you could cover for us for a couple of days because we've gone to…" She trailed off and looked at the others for ideas.

"Gotham City," suggested Ethan off the top of his head, simply because it was in the opposite direction to where Holme seemed to be headed.

"Yeah, because Will and Warren won a circuit around the city in the Batmobile," finished Zach.

Before Josie could respond to that suggestion, Maj announced, "People, he's almost out of range, we need to go _now_." With that she picked up her laptop and they all filed out of Ethan's office, leaving Josie standing in the doorway, watching after them as she wondered what she was going to tell Steve.

Which at least took her mind off worrying about where Will was.

* * *

The further they followed Holme away from Maxville, the more another worry loomed – the fact that they were, in effect, going AWOL. The NCS were not even aware that two heroes were missing and the interloping shape-shifter had been captured. The gang hadn't reported any of this because their superiors would have had Holme arrested and that would have been the end of trying to get any information from him. The National Council would definitely not have allowed them to inject him with an isotope tracer and then let him go free. When the NCS found out about it all there could be some serious trouble, but for the moment they had to concentrate on finding Will and Warren.

In the middle of the afternoon they crossed into the next state. Towards evening they were approaching Metrocity and Holme turned off the highway. As they followed him into the city, where there was more traffic, they dared to close the gap and tail him a little closer. He drove into the Metrocity Hospital parking lot, and they followed soon afterwards, pulling into a parking space within view of the entrance as he walked into the building.

Zach came around to the back of the van and they watched the progress on the scanner without a word. None of them could imagine what he was doing at the Hospital. Then things got even more confusing when he got in an elevator which went downwards below what was apparently the lowest level.

"But there's nothing beneath the parking basement," said Denise, bewildered.

"Apparently there is, unless he's just shape-shifted into a mole," Maj commented.

"So, what now?" asked Zach, "Are we going in?"

"It'd help if we knew to get there," replied Ethan. "The elevator doesn't normally go down that far."

"So what do we do?" Kate asked. "Stake out here and hope he'll come out again before the isotope wears off?"

"How much of an option do we have?" said Magenta. "He's our only lead."

What followed was possibly the longest night of their lives. They checked into a hotel two blocks away and kept watch on the scanner in rotation, not that anyone got much sleep when it wasn't their turn. By 3am they were all gathered in the girls' room, sitting around Maj's laptop, and had room service deliver hot chocolate and marshmallows, coffee and herbal tea. Zach also ordered doughnuts which, he claimed in an effort to lighten the mood, were the only appropriate snack for a stakeout.

"I know this is totally off the topic, but I think it was Holme who tried to break into the DNA Vault here," said Magenta, dunking marshmallows in her coffee.

Denise agreed. "That could certainly explain why the security mainframe logged three _different_ people on the iris and hand scanners."

"Speaking of the last time we were here," said Layla thoughtfully, picking little bits of icing off her doughnut, "Don't you think it's an awful coincidence that we traced Jerry Holme to _this_ city – this _quadrant_ of the city – which just happens to be where his old school friend operates?"

Kate paused as she was about to take a bite of her doughnut. "You think Simmonds is behind this?"

"Layla, he's a registered hero, he wouldn't dare do something like that," objected Ethan, but she just gave him a look. "Just because you don't like the guy …"

"That's got nothing to do with this."

"I think you're jumping to conclusions a bit, Layla," said Denise, drinking her coffee.

"But it _is_ quite a coincidence," Kate pointed out.

"Yeah, Ethan," said Zach in between marshmallows. "Remember what you said the other day about Oakley's Raise or whatever."

Ethan had to think for a moment before he realized what Zach was on about. "Occam's Razor," he corrected him and then quoted it, "_All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one._"

"Well, wouldn't you say my suggestion is the 'simplest solution'?" said Layla.

"Not really," Denise replied. "What about the fact that while Holme was most likely trying to rob the Vault, Simmonds was _helping_ you against Magmaniac? That means it's highly improbable that they're in cahoots."

"He wasn't much help, actually. He could have just been pretending. And don't forget, he's already shown himself to be not entirely loyal to the cause," she replied, referring to Brett's comic book.

"Maybe it_ is_ a bit of a wild guess, but it's all we've got," Kate said. "Unless Holme comes out and leads us somewhere else really soon, we're at a dead end."

They looked at one another uncertainly. While Layla's theory was only somewhat plausible, they really didn't have anything else to go on, and their collective lack of sleep wasn't helping rational thinking. With a round of shrugs and hesitant nods they voted to go ahead with it, and Ethan gave a sigh.

"When this is all over, I'm having the whole lot of you implanted with subcutaneous location beacons!"

* * *

Brett Simmonds was a postman.

It wasn't the most glamorous of cover jobs, but it was convenient because nobody really noticed if their mail got delivered a little late on the days there was some sort of crisis that interrupted his schedule. Plus, it was less tricky – not to mention, less embarrassing – than having a sister with psychotic episodes, however well that cover story seemed to work for Amber.

Speaking of her, Brett had to admit that he couldn't blame her for dumping that dweeb. The guy was just getting too suspicious for comfort. Of course, Amber could have made an application to the NCS to have Keith screened for clearance but they would most likely consider him a security risk and forbid her from telling him anything. Not that the idiot was worth the effort anyway.

Brett walked to the next driveway on his route as a van pulled up on the side of the road, but he didn't really take much notice of it. He was putting the letters into the mailbox when a thin silvery bracelet was snapped around his wrist by someone who seemed to appear out of thin air. Of course, he knew some people who _could_ do that, but that wasn't the case here because he knew what her power was.

"Uh, hi Layla," he said uncertainly and looked around to find himself surrounded by some of her other friends he remembered from high school. That probably meant that the bracelet was some kind of power-neutralizing restraint.

"Let's take a drive, Mr. Simmonds."

* * *

Simmonds climbed in the back of the van and Zach drove off. He looked around at them and noticed straight away who was missing.

"Where are Will and Warren?"

"Actually, that's the question we're asking you," replied Kate. He looked at her a little uncertainly, as if he didn't quite remember her, but she stared back impassively. Although they weren't wearing their uniforms, because it wasn't official superhero business, they went with the sunglasses anyway to try for an intimidating look.

"How should I know?" he asked.

Magenta explained with a dose of sarcasm, "Whoever it was had an accomplice – your old friend Carbon Copy Kid. We traced him here to Metrocity, and while we were here we thought we'd pop in and say hi to you as well."

"Oh, you think I had something to do with it? Look, not everyone stays best buddies with their high school friends like you guys have. I have no idea what Jerry's up to." They looked at him skeptically. "No really, I don't. All I can tell you is that I've heard he's been doing some freelance jobs without asking too many questions, if you know what I mean, but it's not like he's gone totally super villain." He shook his head. "But who in their right minds would kidnap two of Maxville's biggest heroes and expect to keep them hidden, especially from Will's parents?"

"No guarantee they're in their right minds," Kate commented.

"Where exactly in the city did you trace him to?" Simmonds asked.

"Somewhere underneath the Hospital that apparently doesn't exist," replied Maj, gesturing to her laptop screen which was out of his line of sight.

Simmonds frowned slightly. "Let me see that." She gave him a look and he sighed. "Please?" Magenta turned her screen so that he could see. "Okay, I think, no actually I'm quite sure, that's level 7a of Metrocity Hospital."

"Level 7a?" repeated Denise in disbelief.

"Well, you've been to 7b, right? The top secret level for super-powers? Well, 7a isn't between 7 and 7b, it's below the basement. It's the ultra top secret level that most of the NCS, particularly the directors, don't even know about." They shared a few concerned glances and then looked back at him as he continued. "You see, there are some elements of the organization who aren't particularly concerned with integrity and they're quite happy to turn a blind eye to what's going on."

"And what exactly _is_ going on?" demanded Layla.

"I'm guessing some less than ethical medical research."

"_What?!_"

"How do you know all this?" asked Kate suspiciously.

"Because I've been there. At the time, I didn't know where I was, I thought I was on 7b, but later I worked out that's where I was."

"You're going to have to explain that," said Magenta.

Simmonds gave a sigh. "Okay, about a week or two ago, I was asked to participate in some revolutionary new research, something very technical to do with genes and superpowers that I really didn't understand. But I went along with it because I know, like every other hero around here, that genetic research is the specialty at the Metrocity Hospital, so I reckoned it was legit even if the explanation went over my head." He leaned forward and spoke earnestly. "Now you have to understand, they've rigged it so that you think you're on level 7a. The elevator lobby looks _exactly_ the same, the signs on the walls, everything. Even the elevator lights show that you're going up to the floor between 7 and 8, meantime you're actually going downwards."

"And then what?" prompted Ethan.

"They put a bracelet on my wrist and asked me to power up, which I did and they made notes. And then they escorted me back to the elevator. The next day I wanted to go back 'cause I was curious and I had a few questions, but there was something else where that lab was. And that's when I got suspicious and I remembered a couple of other things that seemed to have changed suddenly."

"Like what?" asked Kate, but Ethan interrupted.

"What I don't understand is, how can most of the NCS not know about it?"

"They're a top secret government organization," shrugged Simmonds. "It's easy to keep secrets; just tell people they don't have clearance to know about something."

"But why didn't you report it?" asked Denise. "Or has someone threatened you?"

"No, no one's threatened me, probably because they have no idea what I know. And I haven't reported it because all I really have are some suspicions. Until they pulled this stunt with kidnapping Warren and Will, they hadn't really done anything _wrong_. So I didn't say anything, possibly for the same sort of reason as why you guys didn't report my comic book to the NCS."

Magenta snorted in disbelief. "That was because Warren thought you and Amber made such a great superhero team and because you were doing so much good here, he thought it would be a pity to break that up unnecessarily."

Brett gave a sad half-smile. "Actually, that's closer to my reasoning than you realize."

* * *

The two captive heroes looked up as Dr. Shelley came in again, no doubt to deliver yet another speech about why they should participate in his experiment. Will sighed and Warren closed his eyes and lay back on the concrete floor.

However, the scientist seemed to have something else in mind. "I thought a familiar face might encourage you to cooperate so I invited my protégé to join us."

The door opened again, and someone came in.

"I don't believe it."

Warren, hearing Will's astounded tone, opened his eyes and sat up. He couldn't believe it either.

"_Amber??_"

She sauntered over to Shelley and slipped her arm through his as he said, "Would you like to make them feel a bit more at home, dear?"

"Sure, Dad," she replied sweetly and walked up to Warren and Will.

" 'Dad'?" repeated Will, flabbergasted.

"Hello boys. Are you comfortable?" said Amber in honeyed tones of pure poison. "Because if there's anything we can do to make your stay any less pleasant, please don't hesitate to ask."


	6. Hero Complex

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

**Chapter ****6: Hero Complex**

"Okay, kid. What can I do for you?"

Keith Tyler just looked at the private investigator for a second. His brother would probably have expected the man behind the desk to be wearing a trench coat and fedora or something. Instead he looked like he could be an accountant or a businessman. It was a good thing Bradley wasn't here to comment on his choice of PI, he thought.

Actually, it was a good thing Bradley wasn't here, end of story. He would probably think he was being paranoid. Maybe he was, but he couldn't help it.

"I understand that the specialty of this agency is, uh, infidelity cases?" Keith started, trying to sound like his 'understanding' was something more impressive than the ad in the Yellow Pages. The investigator nodded, and he went on, "Well, my girlfriend broke up with me recently, and I suspect it's because she's involved with a married man."

"So you want me to find out if she's sneaking off to meet him or something?"

"Oh no," Keith answered quickly. "I want you to find out what _he's_ up to. She's totally above suspicion."

"Sure she is," muttered the investigator, giving him a skeptical look for some reason. "What's his name and where's he live?"

"Warren Peace, Maxville."

The man typed the details into his computer and a moment later looked up at Keith. "Sorry, I can't take this case or I could lose my license. The guy's on the Exempt list."

"The Exempt list?"

"Every year the FBI puts out a list of people that are off-limits for both police and private investigation," explained the investigator. "Even their own people need top-level security clearance to stick their noses in there."

"What sort of people are on this list?" asked Keith suspiciously.

"Well, their own agents of course, plus CIA, top secret government officials, Area 51, superheroes, reformed super villains, people in the witness protection program, Black ops, foreign defectors, all those kinds of people. I try digging and I'll have the damn Feds on my case before I even find anything useful."

"Oh, okay."

"If you like, I can track her instead."

"No! I already told you, _she's_ not the problem." The investigator gave him that condescending look again, and he got up quickly. "But thanks for your time, anyway."

Keith left the PI's office, thinking over the list of 'Exempt' people and wondering which one Warren could be. Witness protection program was unlikely. It was far more plausible to be something like Black ops or CIA … or reformed super villain … possibly not as reformed as the FBI would like to think.

Poor Layla, what had his dear sweet cousin got herself involved with? And what about his beloved Amber – how had she got caught up in this mess? Come to think about it, that could be the reason why she broke up with him. Maybe she did it to protect him from Warren, or possibly because Warren forced her to for some reason.

One thing he was sure about. Warren Peace was up to something despicable, and Amber was in serious trouble at his mercy.

* * *

It took a few minutes before Warren could respond to who they saw. When he could, the first question that came to mind was, "What the hell happened to you?" 

"Oh, you mean, why am I not the good little hero I was pretending to be?" Amber asked, and then she frowned thoughtfully. "I tried to be, you know. For the first few years, I played by all the rules, had a perfect record. Then, a couple of years ago, I was helping with a dangerous prisoner transfer of a serial killer called Frostbite. He drained the heat from his victims with a single touch, however he couldn't stand being cold himself so I wasn't allowed to use my powers on him because that would kill him. Anyhow, he managed to break free of the power-neutralizing restraints and he killed the other superheroes who were guarding him, good friends of mine actually. And, because we're not allowed to use lethal force, I wasn't able to stop him and he got away." She paused for a moment, her eyes filling with tears. She carried on her narration with obvious difficulty. "The next person he murdered was my fiancé, less than a month before our wedding. It was going to be the most beautiful day of my life, and..." She couldn't go on.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Will.

"And so I started doing some serious thinking about all the rules of engagement that the National Council forces on us, while the bad guys have no such restrictions. It hardly seems like a fair fight, you know. And so I promised that I would do whatever it took to make this world a safer place, no matter what the cost.

Will asked skeptically, "And that cost includes trying to force us to participate in your research?"

"Ends and means, you know," she replied. "I would have thought you two of all people would appreciate what we're trying to do here."

He didn't respond to her dig. Instead, he pointed out, "You know, you're taking a hell of a risk. The rest of our team will be hunting for us."

"Not to mention his parents will be tearing the country apart," added Warren.

"It's a calculated risk. Believe me, we wouldn't have gone to all this effort unnecessarily."

"Then why?" asked Will. "Can't you just rig yourself up to this thing and use your powers?"

Amber sighed. "We tried that. We tried it on a number of people – me, Jerry, the hired ninjas, even Brett, although he didn't know what he was here for at the time. But none of us have strong enough genes for it to work. We all have only one super-powered parent. And then I found some nurse up on 7b who had both parents, and the experiment _almost_ worked. So I finally managed to convince my dad that I was right along. What this experiment really needed was _you_, third generation on both sides," she turned to Warren and continued, "and _you_, possibly the most purebred pyro alive." She took a closer look at him. "By the way, what happened to the hair?"

"What, you mean the red streaks?" he replied, subtly pulling his jacket sleeves further down over his hands to make sure his lack of pyro tattoos stayed hidden as he gave his cover story, "Dyed them out."

"Why?"

"Don't know," he shrugged. "Guess I got tired of the funny looks and felt like blending with the crowd."

Amber gave a nasty laugh. "You? Blend with the crowd? This I have to see."

"Speaking of blending with the crowd," said Will, trying to draw her attention from anything that might give away the fact that Warren didn't have his powers, "You've been doing an awfully good impersonation of a superhero."

"Why, thank you, Will," she replied in a patronizing tone.

"Why did you help us against Magmaniac?" he asked. "Didn't that mess up your father's diversion to break into the DNA Vault?"

Her voice became even more condescending. "It would have looked a bit suspicious if I hadn't helped, wouldn't it? Any more stupid questions from the peanut gallery?"

Warren ignored the 'stupid' barb and asked, "Your, uh, father mentioned that you got a DNA sample from each of us?"

"Oh, that was just so easy." She looked at Will, "Remember when Magmaniac chucked you into the wall and Brett and I helped you up and dusted you off? Well, Brett was being helpful, I was just helping myself to a strand of hair on your jacket." Then she turned to Warren. "As for you, that was even easier, considering you were the only person in your aunt-in-law's house to leave long dark hair on the couch. Anything else?"

"Yeah," said Will. "What exactly makes you think we'll cooperate with your insane scheme?"

Amber gave an unpleasant smile. "I thought you'd never ask." She called out, "Bring her in."

One of the ninjas came into the room, dragging a little girl. It was the child they'd seen outside the bowling alley and tried to help when they'd been ambushed. Will and Warren shared a glance, understandably quite cynical considering the last time they'd encountered her.

"I know what you're thinking," remarked Amber, "And you're quite wrong. I mean, what would a girl that age know about duplicity? She's as much a victim as you are."

The girl turned huge pleading eyes towards them, but they did their best to ignore her, instead fixing their captor with dual glares.

After a few minutes of this staring contest, Amber seemed to run out of patience. "I'm disappointed. Aren't you two boy scouts going to save her from this big scary man? He's one of those guys who really likes little girls, if you know what I mean."

"Oh, you mean, to eat?" replied Warren with matching sarcasm, intentionally misunderstanding her.

There was a 'duh' reaction on the child's face, which suddenly made him suspicious. A girl that age had no business understanding that kind of subtext. Then he thought back to what Amber had said earlier about the people they'd tried to experiment on – herself, Brett Simmonds, the ninjas… _Jerry_. The only Jerry he knew was that idiot Carbon Copy Kid, and while it seemed like a bit of a long shot, it suddenly made a lot of sense.

He looked the sweet little munchkin in the eye. "You should stick with doing Boomer. That's the only impersonation of yours that anyone ever really fell for."

Amber's irritated reaction confirmed that he was right, and she gestured for the ninja to let go of the shape-shifter as he morphed back into his own form.

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that." He looked extremely pleased with himself. "You two got duped very nicely by the little girl the other evening."

"Enough asking you nicely to cooperate," said Amber and she told Holme, "Do your worst."

She stepped back as the shape-shifter walked up to their force field cell.

"I suppose you think your little friends are going to come and rescue you?" he sneered at the heroes. "Pity about the fact that they hate your guts now, thanks to me." He shifted into each of the two of them, and then each of their friends, as he described for them in malicious detail all the hurt and anger he had caused.

What did he think he was doing? Telling them that sort of thing, whether it was true or not, was hardly going to encourage them to … oh, wait, that was it – having failed to elicit sympathy, now he was trying to provoke them into powering up in anger.

Nice try, kiddo.

Of course, it helped that neither of them was currently _capable_ of powering up, so they weren't really in any danger of giving in to that temptation.

Then Holme played his trump card, making a lewd remark about Layla. For the first time Warren was actually glad that he didn't have his powers, even though he was positive that the shape-shifter was lying.

"You don't want me to lose my temper," he warned both him and Amber in a low voice. "No really, you don't."

Not surprisingly, Amber didn't exactly take Warren's threat seriously. After all, the odds were stacked quite heavily against the heroes.

"I'll be sure to bear that in mind," she replied sarcastically.

He continued to glare at her as Will asked, "So was there _any _truth at all in that whole sob story about Frostbite killing your fiancé?"

She pretended to think about it. "Well, Frostbite _did_ escape from superhero custody a couple of years ago. That's about it," she replied offhandedly and added smugly, "You fell for it, though."

He didn't give her the satisfaction of a response to that. "So, what _really_ happened to you?"

"I grew up," she answered simply. "I stopped being a naïve, silly girl who believed in fairytale happy endings. I took a good long look at this world we're supposed to be saving on a regular basis and you know what I realized? That they're a bunch of ungrateful morons and weaklings who are enjoying their lives much more than we are. We're a bunch of patsies, bound by those stupid rules of fair play, meanwhile the bad guys get to do what they like, however they like."

"So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, huh?" Warren remarked dryly.

"Not quite. I'm not about to change my name to The White Witch and go around turning people into ice sculptures unless I'm paid some exorbitant amount of money. It's just that this whole goody-goody routine really wasn't working out for me. This isn't a Disney movie where the good guys are pretty much guaranteed a happily ever after. This is real life, where nice guys finish last. So when my dad came up with his brilliant scheme to create the ultimate superheroes, I thought maybe he was onto something."

Will shook his head in disbelief. "Don't tell me you you've actually bought into his saving-the-world-by-taking-it-over spiel?"

After taking a quick look around to check that her father wasn't in the room, Amber replied quietly, "What, you think I'm deranged too? No, I saw this project's potential more along the lines of financial gain. Who wants to buy weapons of mass destruction when they can buy super soldiers capable of even more destruction? Instant best-seller. You see, boys, the real 'super' power in this world is money."

Once again they found themselves staring at her, at a loss for words.

"I think I preferred the sob story," said Warren finally. "Much more emotionally engaging."

"Didn't work though," Will pointed out.

"A minor setback," she answered lightly. "It's a question of incentives. All I need to do is find the right one."

* * *

"Josie! Josie? Josie, where are you?" 

Josie looked up as she heard Steve call. "I'm down here," she raised her voice reluctantly.

The Secret Sanctum had been her hideout all day so far. She'd been avoiding him as much as possible since the previous morning when Will's friends had left Maxville. Steve knew something was wrong, but she'd mumbled some excuse about it being a woman thing and he had accepted that, for the moment at least. She was really glad he hadn't pressed the issue, since she'd never been able to lie to him. So much so that the only way she'd been able to give him her story about Will was to phone him, rather than talk face to face.

Steve slid down the firemen's pole and came up to her with a confused expression. "I just tried to call Will but his phone was off. Even if he was helping out some old Sky High friend at a charity event in Geocity, I don't understand why he –"

He broke off when he saw the look on her face.

"He's not really at a charity event in Geocity, is he?" She couldn't answer, and he stepped closer to the desk she was sitting at. "Josie, where is Will?"

* * *

The rest of the Guardians regarded Simmonds skeptically for a long time after his confession. 

"Do you honestly think we're going to believe that _Amber_ is involved with kidnapping Will and Warren?" asked Magenta.

He sat back with a sigh. "Actually, I'm not surprised that you don't. But if you look through your fancy database you'll find that her dad, Dr. P.B. Shelley, works for the NCS at the Hospital even though he doesn't actually have any powers."

"That doesn't prove that he's working on something suspicious in the basement," countered Ethan.

"Look him up and when you see his photo you'll realize that you never saw the man on level 7b despite the fact that he's employed in super-powered research."

"We didn't see _everybody_ who's employed in super-powered research while we were there anyway," replied Denise.

"Look, I don't blame you for not believing me," said Simmonds heavily. "I mean, I know I was a jerk some of the time at high school – okay, a lot of the time – but that doesn't mean I'm a bad guy."

"You haven't exactly proved yourself to be the soul of integrity and discretion lately, you know," Layla pointed out.

Brett frowned slightly for a second and then realized what she meant. "Oh, you're talking about my comic. Let's get this over with: I'm sorry, alright?" They just looked at him, unconvinced and he sighed. "Okay, let me explain why I did it and then maybe you'll take my word for the real issue here. Since I was a kid I've always wanted to get into working on comic books but I can't draw to save my life, so my only hope was to get in on the writing side, maybe using some inside information from being in the business. When Warren – well, Knight-Fire – died, I thought that was my chance. The NCS takes about six months to declassify mission reports because superheroes have this thing about coming back to life, so I just took the opportunity to sell my story before the official stuff became available. And I'd like to point out that I didn't mention Warren's real name or give away anything that would compromise the rest of you people."

There was a pause after his little speech, while they thought that over.

Kate decided to change the topic, getting back to her earlier question. "You mentioned just now that you noticed there were some things that had changed suddenly? Like what?"

"Stuff like a window blind that was bent, then appeared to be suddenly fixed on the day I went for the experiment, but since then it's been broken again. Small things like that – I'll show you when we're there if you like."

"Wait a minute," objected Layla. "What's this 'we'?"

He replied, "Well, obviously you'll need to go down there if you want to rescue your teammates, and I can help you."

"Yeah, right," muttered Magenta.

"I know where you need to go, and besides, you'll need someone who belongs in this City to work the biometric sensor on the elevator."

Ethan and Denise shared a glance. That was a good point; they'd only been granted temporary access while they were working there.

"Let me put this bluntly," said Kate. "How do we know you're not leading us into a trap?"

"You don't," he admitted and turned to Layla. "But I seem to remember you were always chirping that it's unfair to prejudge and label people. How about applying some of that philosophy to me and giving me a chance?"

Everyone's gaze swung in Layla's direction, but she wasn't quite sure why they were all looking to _her_ for the final decision. Maybe it was because Brett had addressed his comment to her, or maybe it was because it had been her idea to investigate him in the first place. Either way, she had to admit, the sunglasses really did add intimidation value.

And the responsibility of being a leader sucked. There was too much, too many lives, riding on her decision. She had a sudden insight into what Will went through all the time.

Layla took a deep breath, hoping desperately that she was making the right choice. "Look, whether or not it's a trap, we need to go down there. We don't have an alternative; it's our only lead. And, yeah, I guess our colleague here could be useful."

With the decision made, the team got down to business. Ethan and Magenta quizzed Simmonds on the layout of level 7a and as much as he could remember of what to expect, while Kate phoned Josie to give her an update.

To her surprise, it was Steve who answered. "Uh, hi Steve," she said, trying not to sound as jumpy as she felt.

"Kate, I left a message on Will's phone just now. Why didn't he have it switched on?"

She thought very quickly. "Yeah, we got your message, that's why I'm phoning back," she lied smoothly, "You see, the reception here is really bad since a rampaging monster knocked down half the cell towers." She hoped that he wouldn't ask for any more details because her mind was suddenly a total blank about where they supposedly were. "So I just wanted to call and tell you everything's fine, Will's waving hello and giving a thumbs up and, uh… yeah, everything's going great."

"Thanks for calling back, Kate." Steve sounded a little curt, but he didn't give the impression that he suspected anything. "Bye."

"Bye." She hung up and heaved a sigh that it was over.

"Did he buy it?" asked Layla.

"I hope so." But she didn't sound at all sure.

* * *

Josie's phone rang on her desk and Steve snatched it up before she could. Seeing the caller ID, he answered and then said, "Kate, I left a message on Will's phone just now. Why didn't he have it switched on?" He listened for a bit, and then replied, "Thanks for calling back, Kate. Bye." 

He closed the phone and then crushed it in his hand. "Do you people all think I'm _stupid_?" he asked with barely contained fury. "Now, for the last time, answer the question." He leaned on the desk, looming over her.

"Where. Is. Will?"

There was no escaping telling him now. "We don't know," she answered very quickly to get it over with faster. "He and Warren were kidnapped on Thursday night and the gang have traced them to Metrocity, still waiting for more info."

Steve clenched and unclenched his fists a few times without saying a word, and then walked abruptly past her to a biometric scanner on the nearby wall. He used it to open a concealed door, revealing a small room with reinforced walls, floor and ceiling, and then he slammed the door shut behind him.

Josie winced at every blow and crash that the walls took as Steve worked off his anger, knowing that she should be grateful that he wasn't taking it out on the rest of the Sanctum. That was the very reason that they'd had that room built.

When he had calmed down, he came out and sat in a chair next to her, not saying anything.

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you," she apologized. "But we knew you'd never be content to stay here and protect the City if you knew that your son was missing."

"Damn right I won't," he replied, standing up. "Let's go."

"We're not going," she said firmly. "We will _not_ leave Maxville unprotected."

"That's the chance we'll have to take, Josie. He's our son!"

"I'm aware of that, Steve!" she snapped. "You think I'm not worried too? But we have a responsibility here. How do you think Will would feel if people _died_ because we were too busy rescuing him instead of them?"

"This isn't a good time for thinking about his _feelings_, this is –"

She cut him off as she stood up too. "No, this is a _very_ good time for thinking about his feelings. Let's just turn the situation around for a minute. What if it was _us_ who were captured – don't shake your head like that, Steve, it _is_ possible – and Will abandoned his duty to come and rescue us, but while his back was turned some horrible super villain blew up a school bus full of children. How would you feel?"

"Josie –"

"Steve." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Think about it. How would that make you feel?"

He sighed and finally looked her in the eye. "I'd feel really bad." He sat down heavily with another sigh. "And I'd feel like I wasn't much of a hero."

She came up behind him and massaged his shoulders. "He'll be fine. And the best way we can help him is by holding the fort while he's gone."

Steve nodded and agreed reluctantly. "Yeah, I guess so."

Will was going to be all right. He had to be.

* * *

Bradley wasn't sure what to think when he looked out of his bedroom window and saw Amber walking up to the front door. On the one hand he couldn't really blame her for dumping his idiot sibling, but on the other hand, Keith _was_ his brother and he supposed he should have some sort of family loyalty. He had to admit, he did actually feel sorry for his brother, especially after he came back from wherever he'd been that morning. Keith had spent the rest of the day leaving messages on her voicemail that sounded like he was very worried about her for some reason. 

It was a good thing that she appeared to be okay, but Bradley couldn't help being a bit suspicious about the reason for her visit. Much as he considered his brother to be a complete prat, he didn't want him to get hurt again.

He went downstairs quietly and snuck down the hallway to just outside the kitchen, where he could hear every word Amber and Keith were saying. Fortunately for him, their mother was out shopping, because if she caught him now he would have a lot of explaining to do, and she probably wouldn't buy the excuse that he was only doing it because he was looking out for his brother's feelings.

"I only broke up with you because I was forced to," Amber was saying.

"I knew it!"

She sounded confused. "You did?"

"Well, I guessed. It was the only thing that made sense of why you just suddenly dumped me out of the blue."

Oh please, thought Bradley.

"I'm just so glad to see you're all right," Keith continued.

"I'm fine for now, but it's my father. They have him prisoner, forcing him to work on some vile experiment."

"Who's got him prisoner?"

"It's a rogue branch of a secret government agency, so I can't go to the police. And they've threatened that if I go to the superheroes, they'll kill my father."

Okay, this was getting seriously weird. Time to join the conversation.

He walked casually into the kitchen and acted surprised to see Keith's visitor. "Oh, hi, Amber. What's up?"

"Grown-up stuff, Bradley," replied his brother quickly. "Why don't you go do your homework upstairs, huh?"

Amber laid a placating hand on his arm. "No, Keith, we may need him. If we're going to rescue my father, we need all the help we can get."

* * *

When Amber came into the room and Warren saw who was with her, his heart sank. She had serious bargaining power now. 

Definitely couldn't let _her_ know that, though.

"Oh, this is a brilliant plan," he commented sarcastically. "Making threats with hostages I don't even care about."

Will took his cue from him, and responded with the same pretended nonchalance, "She must be getting desperate."

Keith and Bradley wandered into the room in the general direction of the heroes, looking very confused at what was going on, while Amber hung back near the door.

"You two better watch your mouths or some hostages are going to start dying," she warned as she fiddled with some switches on a panel.

"Fine," replied Warren airily and he gestured to Keith. "You can start with him. I never liked him much and it wouldn't be much of a loss to mankind."

Amber chuckled. "Oh, if only there was a hidden camera here or something so I could have a record of you saying _that_."

"Amber, what's going on?" asked Keith. He started towards her but when he reached the gap between two of the columns he discovered, quite painfully, a force field. Evidently that was what she had been doing at the control panel.

Bradley touched the other sides of their cell which was a short distance from Warren and Will's. "Whoa. It's a force field. A real actual force field."

"A force field?" repeated his brother, considerably less impressed. "Am I trapped in some kind of sci-fi show or something?"

"No, but you _are_ trapped," replied Amber helpfully.

"Please tell me what's going on?"

"Seeing as you asked so nicely, I'll tell you. Here's the lowdown." Her smile dropped, replaced by a scornful expression. "You are a moron. And the fact that you thought _I_ would be interested in _you_ makes you a double moron, albeit quite a useful one."

"You were just … using me?" he asked, stunned.

"That first night we met, when you mentioned that you had a cousin called Layla who used to attend Maxville Academy," she gave the heroes a significant smirk as she named the alias for Sky High, "I was pretty sure there was only oneperson _that_ could be. I knew that sooner or later you'd lead me to the subject I wanted for my dad's experiment, and although I was expecting Stronghold Junior instead of the Hothead here, but it turns out that's close enough."

Poor Keith looked completely horrified at her duplicity, and she turned her attention to the heroes.

"So, boys, I think now is a good time for that wise old saying about great power and great responsibility?"

"Actually, it's our 'great responsibility' to make sure you don't get your hands on 'great power'," Will shot back.

Warren added in a low voice, "I once said I would burn down the City I'm sworn to protect before I allowed 'great power' to fall into the wrong hands."

"Hmm, speaking of some of those 'wrong hands', how's your daddy doing?" asked Amber maliciously. "Still in solitary at the super villain prison?"

Warren saw Bradley's shocked reaction out of the corner of his eye, but he forced himself to ignore it. "You can find out for yourself when you join him there," he told her. "Except I don't think you'll make it into the Dangerously Intelligent section."

Amber's eyes narrowed, and she threw his words from earlier back at him. "You really don't want _me_ to lose my temper, either." As Bradley and Keith watched astounded, she held out her hands and powered up. A blast of icy air shot from her palms through the force field at Warren, not enough to freeze him completely, but sufficient to give him a severe chill. "I know you _hate_ being cold," she mocked.

Warren clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, and hissed. "Yeah, that's why it never would have worked out between us."

But Amber wasn't going to let him have the last word. She strode over to the control panel for the force field generator and flipped a few switches. As she did so, there was a slight hum and the walls surrounding the hostages became slightly opaque, as if the force field was double thickness now. It was still mostly transparent, and sound still traveled perfectly well.

"You're obviously not taking this seriously, so there's no point in me threatening to kill them if you don't comply in an hour, or however long I feel like waiting." She pressed a button and Keith and Bradley's cell slowly began to fill up with water from small nozzles that appeared in the corner pillars.

The cryokinetic turned to Warren and Will. "You know exactly what you need to do to rescue them," she sneered, and delivered her parting shot as she walked out. "I suggest you think it over. Quickly."


	7. Great Power

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

_**A/N: **__I'm really, really sorry you all had to wait so long for this update! I won't bore you with the details of my excuses, but suffice it to say that Real Life kept getting in the way of important things like writing..._

* * *

**Chapter ****7: Great Power**

Unfortunately, Amber was quite right about one thing. Warren _did_ hate being cold.

But he certainly wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him show it. As soon as she was gone, however, he shivered and rubbed his arms. Will gave him a sympathetic look and then turned his attention to the hostages who were ankle-deep in water. It seemed that the water was running in faster now.

He shook his head and took off the neutralizer so that he could use his super-strength to punch out one of the pillars. "I guess there's no real option here."

"Wait." Warren had been looking between the more opaque force fields surrounding Keith and Bradley, which were evidently watertight, and the totally transparent ones around him and Will, which seemed to be permeable considering Amber's icy blast had got through. This reminded him of something he had read once…

"What, you think she's bluffing?"

"No idea, but we can't exactly take a chance." Warren looked around, needing something to test out the theory that was quickly forming in his mind. He caught sight of his wedding ring, which he suddenly realized would be perfect for the job. Sliding it off his finger, he went over to the gap between the columns, with his back to the one-way glass panel to hide what he was about to try from their captors.

"What are you doing?"

"Testing how permeable this force field is," replied Warren, holding his ring carefully in his fingertips and moving it towards where he guessed the invisible force field was.

"Huh?"

The edge of the ring touched the force field, and they could see it shimmering in the same way it had before when it was touched.

"Some force fields don't allow anything through at all, end of story," Warren explained, pushing the ring further so that it was half on the other side of the shimmering field. "But with others, it's possible for objects to pass through, but they get totally destroyed in the process unless they're pretty much indestructible."

"Like your wedding ring," Will caught on quickly. "Hey, how did you know that?"

"It's how Shield Girl sliced up The Hydra in an early issue of _Team Shield_," Warren smirked. "Hero History wasn't the only subject I passed thanks to reading comics, you know."

"Okay, that makes a lot more sense. No offense, but I'm not used to you being the brains of the operation."

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," replied Warren dryly. He drew his ring back and then tossed it lightly through the force field in order to check that it could actually pass the whole way through safely. It landed on the concrete outside their cell, and he turned to Will. "So, if an object that is indestructible can pass through, then theoretically so can a person who is, for instance, invulnerable."

Will smiled grimly, and then something else occurred to him. "Wait, wouldn't that be powering up?"

"I don't think so," answered Warren and he turned to the hostages' cell, where the water had reached knee level, and raised his voice. "Bradley, remember what you told me a couple of months ago about active and passive powers?"

"This isn't a comic book!" objected Keith loudly.

"Well, not _yet_ anyway," replied Warren under his breath. "Bradley? The Commander's invulnerability is passive, right?"

"Yeah, because he doesn't power up, it's there all the time," came the reply. "You could think of it as conscious versus unconscious components of his powers, but the Official Handbook of Wonder Comics uses the terms active and passive, therefore–"

Warren turned back to Will. "What he said." He stretched one hand determinedly towards the force field until Will knocked it aside.

"What are you doing?"

Warren frowned. "What, you think I'm going to volunteer _you_ to test my theory?"

"But you don't have your invulnerability," Will objected quietly.

"Yeah well, last chance, life-or-death situation, you know."

"No," replied Will flatly.

"We don't have time to argue about this," said Warren, gesturing to Bradley and Keith who had taken off their shoes and were now up to the middle of their waists in water.

"I know. I just don't think it's 'last chance' enough," Will reasoned.

"Right. Because there's still you, which means that it's not the last hope," Warren realized, and he sighed. "Good point, I guess."

Will didn't answer. He gritted his teeth and put one hand through the force field, pulling it back quite quickly.

"Painful?" asked Warren, concerned.

"Yeah, but not life-threatening." Will replied, putting things in perspective. He closed his eyes, trying to pretend it was another concrete wall just like so many others he'd rammed into, and ran through the force field. On the other side, he shook himself off quickly and headed for the force field control panel near the door.

After some trial and error with the switches, Will managed to cause one of the force fields surrounding Warren to shimmer suddenly. Warren stretched out a hand cautiously, and found that the field was gone.

He ran over to where Will was still trying to work out how to free Keith and Bradley, just as the door opened and two ninjas came in. Not surprisingly, their escape hadn't gone unnoticed. Will looked up and then around at the hostages' cell, where the water had reached chest level and Keith was trying to convince his brother to stand on his shoulders. Warren could see that Will was struggling to decide which situation required him more.

"You focus on saving the citizens," said Warren, and he added as he handed him the neutralizing bracelet. "Just so you don't get tempted to use your powers."

With that he faced off with the ninjas, carefully keeping between them and Will.

Warren quickly found that this fight was completely different to the other night when the ninjas had taken the two of them by surprise. Now that he was on his guard and could see what he was facing, he was holding his own quite well even though he was outnumbered. Strangely enough, the fact that there were two of them against him alone was actually working to his advantage. They had obviously not trained in fighting a single opponent together, and they tended to get in one another's way more than anything else.

Keith and Bradley were treading water when Will finally found the right buttons to shut off the flow from the nozzles. He breathed a quick sigh of relief and looked around to check how Warren was doing.

Using their super-strength against them, Warren ducked a high kick from one of the ninjas at that same time as hooking his foot around the other one's ankle and grabbing his wrist. He swung the second ninja into the first, who was still off balance from having over-extended his kick. They collided with the nearest pillar and landed in an unconscious heap on the ground.

Will smiled in approval but Warren shook his head. "Don't be too impressed. I don't think those guys were proper ninjas."

"It was still a pretty good move. Where'd you learn that?"

"Your mother," replied Warren offhandedly, and Will looked at him in surprise. "Seriously, dude, she taught us that years ago."

"Guess I've been relying on my powers too much lately," muttered Will, suddenly wishing he'd paid more attention.

He also wished he'd paid more attention to what Amber had done at the control panel. It seemed to operate on a combination of two or three switches, similar to the elevators for the hidden floors of the hospital. Which meant that the possibilities were almost endless. On the upside, he'd accidentally discovered the code for making certain force fields appear, which he memorized just in case.

By chance he happened on the combination he was looking for, and the force fields around the hostages all disappeared at the same time. No longer held up by the invisible walls, the eight foot column of water collapsed outwards in a circular wave, knocking Keith into a nearby pillar in the process. He seemed a bit dazed and he blinked a few times to clear his vision.

Bradley made his way across the wet floor to where their shoes had landed and picked up something small nearby, while Warren went over to give Keith a hand. He hauled him to his feet a little roughly and Keith almost overbalanced but managed to pull himself together in time.

The control panel suddenly started to give off blue sparks, having apparently been splashed by some of the escaping water. Water and electricity never make a good combination, and the short circuits in the control panel started to cause some of the force fields to randomly activate.

Bradley had already reached where Will was standing, but Warren and Keith were just at the last row of pillars when this started to happen. Warren reacted to what was going on the fastest, and just as a force field formed between the columns they were passing, he shoved Keith to safety. The same pain Warren had felt earlier when he'd touched the cell wall shot down his back as he was caught briefly in the field. He took an unsteady step to get out of the way of the pillars, and he realized that his invulnerability must have kicked in just in time.

"You should have been sliced up like The Hydra!" exclaimed Bradley who seemed to appreciate a bit of what had just happened.

"The Hydra wasn't invulnerable," replied Warren taking a few deep breaths.

He tuned out Bradley explaining to his brother (who wasn't really listening either) how the super villain in question had merely re-grown any tentacles that Shield Girl had sliced off with her force fields – largely because he already knew the story – and turned to Will with a slight smile. He expected that he had the rest of his powers back as well, considering his invulnerability factor was part and parcel of being a pyro, not a power on its own. But he couldn't exactly check his other powers just yet. Still, he certainly felt a lot warmer than he had before.

"Last chance, life or death, huh?" remarked Will, grinning.

"Close enough, apparently."

* * *

Josie phoned just as the Guardians were pulling into the Metrocity Hospital parking lot and Kate briefly brought her up to date. She hung up and the heroes went back to discussing who would be going in and who would stay in the van.

Denise, who was not in any way trained for field work, instantly volunteered to stay, and Zach decided to stay too. Magenta and Ethan chose to accompany Layla and Kate, although in Maj's case it was largely to keep an eye on Brett.

As they got out of the van, she hung a bit behind the others and then turned to him. "You try anything funny, and we'll feed you to Layla's Venus flytrap," she said quietly. "In very small pieces."

* * *

With the hostages out of immediate danger and the ninjas still safely unconscious, the next issue was to remove the biosensor bracelets before more trouble arrived. Warren spotted a small cabinet underneath the control panel (which had fortunately stopped giving off sparks) and he opened it to look for something useful.

"I don't suppose we're likely to find a plasma cutter just lying around in there?" asked Will hopefully.

"You wish," replied Warren. The best he could find among the tools in the cabinet was a box of matches, which he held up. "Looks like we'll have to make do with old-fashioned technology."

Will took the matchbox out of his hand with a slight smile and gave him the neutralizer in return. "Just so you don't get tempted."

"Touché." Warren snapped the neutralizer around his wrist and then took a crowbar from the cabinet and went over to the door to jam it closed. It wouldn't last for long if more of the ninjas arrived, but at least it might slow them down a bit.

Will lit a match and held it to the raised panel on his biosensor bracelet, guessing that the keypad would be its weakest point.

"Uh, what's this all about?" asked Keith, still pretty shaken from almost dying twice in a row.

"Oh, just your average scheme for world domination," replied Will, and he frowned a bit. The match was burnt up, but the flame hadn't affected the bracelet at all. "Happens all the time."

"No, it doesn't," said Bradley. "Nobody takes over the world all the time."

"It's the world domination _schemes_ that happen all the time. They don't actually succeed much," Warren clarified. He took off the neutralizer and handed it back to Will. "Your invulnerability could be protecting it the same way it protects your clothes and stuff."

But even with the neutralizer, the biosensor bracelet was immune to fire.

Keith watched their struggles for a while before going over to the cabinet. He fished out a screwdriver and gestured to Will's bracelet. After the two heroes shared a glance, Will held out his wrist.

"So, where does Amber fit into all of this?" asked Keith as he started to pry the buttons off the keypad with the screwdriver.

"Superhero gone bad," answered Warren shortly.

"Great. Not only did my girlfriend use me, but it turns out she's secretly a murderous super villain!"

"Well, we don't know whether she's actually _murdered_ anyone yet," Will tried to soften the blow a bit. "Her powers just put people into cryo stasis, she can't freeze people to death as such."

Keith gave a short laugh, probably an after-effect of the adrenaline, as he removed the last button on the keypad. "No wonder her hands were always cold."

Will lit another match and held it to the open keypad which now caught fire easily. The exposed circuitry melted quickly, and he looked at Keith. "Good thinking, Batman."

He looked confused, so Bradley explained, "Classic comic book quote."

"Oh, right." Keith smiled faintly. "Uh, sure, no problem. I had to do something like that to my keyboard at work the other day when I split coffee on it."

Warren peered at the damage to Will's biosensor bracelet. "I think that's as fried as it's going to get."

"Okay, here goes then." Will powered up and ripped the bracelet off his wrist. He crushed it in one hand while using the other to remove Warren's and squash it too.

The door burst open and four more ninjas appeared. After one of them found himself flying into the opposite wall and another was chased out of the room by fireballs, the others quickly lost interest in fighting and ran off.

Warren turned to Will. "Told you they weren't real ninjas," he commented, mildly disgusted at their cowardice but grateful all the same. He created a flame construct quickly and sent it off to investigate what was going on outside and to look for the way out.

Meanwhile Will flew around the room, picking up the unconscious minions and dumping them between four columns. Then he went over to the control panel, which seemed to have recovered from its short circuit, and activated the force fields around his prisoners. It took some trial and error, and in the end the cell was more L-shaped than square, but the main thing was that the ninjas were safely confined.

Warren created another construct to guard Bradley and Keith, and then, with an instruction to the two of them to stay put, he and Will went off to sort out their captors.

* * *

Layla, Kate, Ethan, Magenta and Brett walked through the hospital reception area trying very hard to look like they were merely there for visiting hours. They got into the elevator and Kate pressed the button to close the doors so that no one else could try to join them.

Everybody looked at Simmonds expectantly for the next step.

"Uh, I'm not actually sure how to…" he trailed off under Maj's glare.

"What happened to being able to help us and knowing the way?" she demanded.

"I know the way once we're down there," he answered quickly, and he turned to the floor selector panel. "Look, it can't be anything too complicated, like a sequence of buttons pressed in a certain order, because I would have noticed that."

Ethan spoke up. "Given that the control for level 7b is activated by pressing 7 and 8 simultaneously, it would make a certain amount of logical sense for 7a to be reached by pressing 7, 8 and the parking basement."

Brett swiped his thumb over the hidden biometric scanner and then pressed 7, 8 and P. Even Ethan was secretly surprised when the lift began to move.

"Look at the floor numbers," commented Kate. They looked up and saw that the lights were indicating that they were going upwards.

"Close your eyes," suggested Brett quietly. "You'll realize we're actually going down."

He was right. But, when they arrived at their destination, it was once again hard to believe that they hadn't gone up to level 7b. Ethan, especially, knew that it was all exactly as he remembered from his time there.

Brett led them over to one of the office windows and pointed to the Venetian blinds. "See, on the real level 7b one of those slats is actually broken." He looked a little sheepish. "I should know. I'm the one who broke it last time I was in this office. Uh, the real one, that is."

Meanwhile Kate was doing some sleuthing of her own. "None of these office doors open," she reported after trying a few. "The personnel can't all have left early for the day."

"Do you people believe me now?" asked Brett, but the question was largely aimed at Magenta, who just ignored it.

"Okay, where to now?" asked Layla, looking around.

"That way doesn't actually go anywhere," answered Brett, pointing to the corridor to the right of the lobby. "The secret labs and stuff are this way." And he set off down the passage without looking to see if the others followed.

They hadn't gone far when they ran into some company. First they came across some scientist-looking people who seemed quite harmless, but they weren't taking any chances. Soon the scientists were neutralized and strung up in a nearby office plant which Brett admitted he'd been positive was plastic.

Next to turn up were three ninjas who looked like they were trying to escape from something or someone. They were a little more difficult to deal with.

Kate created a few constructs to dive-bomb one of them, who then slipped on Ethan in melted form. Brett took out another one with a few fireballs and Layla tied them both up in a rose bush seedling from her utility belt. Magenta shifted into her guinea pig form to duck a blow from the third one. The ninja was about to step on her when he was dispatched with another fireball from Simmonds.

Layla tied up the third ninja too as Maj shifted back into human form. "Thanks," she said to Brett quietly, and she rewarded him with a brief genuine smile.

Kate looked up and pointed at the last construct still circling them. "That's not mine."

On closer inspection, they could all see it was shaped like a phoenix. As it swooped off and headed back the way it came, the Guardians all shared a warm smile, knowing exactly what it meant. Not only were they on the right track, but Warren had got his powers back.

* * *

"Looks like you got your wish," commented Keith as they put their shoes back on.

"Huh?" replied Bradley, still gazing at the guardian construct in awe.

"You got to meet some real superheroes."

"Yeah," he smiled weakly, still rather in shock from everything that had happened. "My favorite one, actually." There was no doubt in his mind that Warren _was_ Knight-Fire. That reminded him of the ring he'd picked up just now when he'd gone to get their shoes, and he took it out.

Keith sighed. "And to think a few hours ago I was sure he was secretly some kind of ex-super villain. Meantime the real super villain turns out to be my girlfriend."

"_Ex_-girlfriend, so don't feel too bad." He was trying to cheer his brother up, but that was the best he could think of.

"Thanks," replied Keith, appreciating his effort, and then he noticed what Bradley was fiddling with. "What's that?"

"Warren's wedding ring. From what I could see, this is what he was using to check if the force field was permeable."

"But how can it be permeable? You just told me that someone used force fields to carve up someone else."

Bradley shrugged. "This ring must be made of some sort of indestructible metal."

"There's no such thing."

"Right, and comic books are fiction," his brother pointed out somewhat sarcastically.

"Good point."

Just then there was a loud crash as the one-way glass window shattered, and through the broken pane they could see a lot of fire and they heard someone scream. Bradley started for the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" Keith demanded.

"I have to see what's going on."

They went out the door and headed cautiously along the corridor towards the lab that was on the other side of the one-way glass. What they saw made them shrink back and stay carefully out of sight.

There was a man, a scientist of some sort, trapped among the flames in the lab and Warren's friend Will had Amber in his grasp, struggling and swearing. He let one of her hands go and she tried to freeze the fire, until Warren snapped a bracelet around her wrist. Bradley realized that it had a neutralizing effect on her powers.

She tugged at the bracelet helplessly. "Daddy!" she called pitifully.

"I'm sure you'd love to rescue him if you could," remarked Warren nastily. "Not a nice feeling, is it?"

"Warren, please!" she wailed. "I would have stopped the water before they drowned!"

"And that's supposed to make everything okay?" he demanded. "You know, I did warn you not to make me lose my temper."

Bradley watched in horror as Warren threw a fireball on the ground near her feet and raised a wall of flames around her from it. He gestured and the fire herded Amber into the lab towards where her father was.

"Knight-Fire!" she cried, evidently trying to appeal to his heroic side, but he ignored her.

She and her father huddled together among the flames. He looked despairingly around at his research and equipment being destroyed, and he yelled to the heroes, "You have no idea what you're destroying! You don't know how high up this goes! It's our mandate to protect the world against super villainy, by any means necessary!"

Warren turned on his heel and walked away from the burning lab. Amber seemed to think this was the end, looking utterly hopeless as she stared after him, and Bradley didn't blame her. He couldn't believe this was happening … his favorite hero was turning evil.

When Warren had gone a few paces, he decided that he'd pushed it far enough. He closed one hand carefully in a gesture that extinguished the blaze all in one go, and nodded to Will that he could take over. Amber and her father were staring around in a state of shock, probably still expecting to die a horrible death, as Will grabbed each of them by the scruff of the neck and flew off at high speed back to the force field room.

As soon as they were gone, Warren leant his back against a nearby wall and slid down to the ground, his eyes closed and jaw clenched in pain. At that point, however, Bradley had limited sympathy for him, even though he had evidently decided not to go through with letting them die. Then he took a closer look at the lab and he realized that there was actually very little damage. The desks, computers and other equipment were completely unscathed, and even the papers were only slightly browned. Evidently the flames had actually been hovering in mid-air.

It had all been for show.

Warren hadn't lost his temper in the slightest. And he hadn't even come close to killing anyone.

Bradley turned his attention back to the hero, watching in surprise as a few locks of his long dark hair turned red, and for a moment he thought Warren was bleeding when he saw lines of red growing on his wrists. Then he realized that they were tattoos appearing on his skin – the same tattoos he had before, from the looks of things – which seemed to be an awfully painful process.

Warren rested his head back against the wall and took a few deep breaths before opening his eyes, and then he saw Bradley. Looking a bit uncertain, the boy handed him his wedding ring.

"Thanks," he said softly, slipping the ring back onto his finger.

"Um, what just happened?" Bradley asked.

Warren didn't see an easy way around the question and, actually, there wasn't much point in trying to deny it. "I got my powers back."

"You lost them?"

Warren nodded. "Against Magmaniac's volcano."

"Okay, that explains a whole lot." There was a pause as Bradley thought it over. "So when I asked you if you were Knight-Fire, at that point you didn't actually have your powers, which means that technically you weren't a superhero at the time… "

Warren could see where this was going, and he finished with a tired smile, "So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."

* * *

Jerry Holme found himself between a rock and a hard place.

More accurately, between an angry pyro and a group of super-powered rescuers. He knew that the corridor he was on had no side passages and the office doors were all fronts to make the place look like level 7b. This was the only way out, which meant that Stronghold and Peace were not far behind him, and ahead of him were the rest of the Maxville heroes, also coming this way from the other direction. He'd just seen them overpowering and neutralizing a few doctors and even three ninjas, so whatever form he tried to take, they would end up finding out that it was him. And he reckoned they probably wouldn't be terribly nice to him considering he had recently escaped from their custody.

Suddenly he appreciated how useful it might be to be able to shift into a small animal. Like a guinea pig, maybe.

He couldn't _believe_ he'd just thought that.

* * *

Warren came around the corner at a bit of a run. "Hey guys! Thanks for coming to rescue us, but we have to get out of here. The parking basement is about to collapse down on us!"

"Where's Will?" asked Kate, understandably concerned.

"He's just dealing with the bad guys quickly, he'll catch up. But it's dangerous down here so he wanted me to get you lot out."

Kate nodded. "Okay, let's go, people."

Layla knew Warren wasn't too keen on PDAs (public displays of affection) during a crisis, but she was just so happy that he was safe and he'd got his powers back that she couldn't resist throwing her arms around him in a big hug.

And then she froze in surprise.

* * *

After Will imprisoned Amber and her father in the force field cell with the rest of their minions, he collected Warren, Keith and Bradley and they set off in the direction where Warren's construct had reported the exit was, along with the rest of their team.

They went around a corner and the two heroes stopped dead when they saw their friends – and Brett Simmonds, of all people – further along the corridor. Their teammates hadn't seen them yet because they were heading in the other direction, apart from Layla who was hugging… Warren.

Warren narrowed his eyes in anger, and Keith and Bradley looked between him and his doppelganger in confusion.

"Shape-shifter," Will explained to them quietly, just as Layla apparently came to the same conclusion. Holme doubled over in pain from a well-placed knee to his groin, shifting back into himself as he hit the ground.

By then Warren had covered the distance between them. "Nice one," he commented to his wife.

"Thanks," she murmured sarcastically. Looking around, she saw Kate giving Will an enthusiastic hug, and then she spotted her somewhat damp cousins and raised her eyebrows in silent query.

"Hostage drama," explained Will, seeing her look. "Long story."

She nodded and turned back to Warren who had hauled the shape-shifter painfully to his feet and slammed him against the wall.

"Now," Warren said in a low menacing tone. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't roast you alive."

* * *

_**A/N:**__ Hope everyone enjoys the final chapter, coming soon … uh, soonish, I hope ;)_

_And, special thanks to my faithful reviewers__ as always! _


	8. Great Responsibility

_**Disclaimer: **__I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me._

_**A/N: **__Once again, I'm really really sorry it's taken me so long to finish this story!_

* * *

**Chapter ****8: Great Responsibility**

"You're bluffing."

"You wish," replied Warren nastily. "One good reason, I'm waiting."

"Uh, because you're such a nice guy?" suggested Holme desperately.

"Says who?"

The shape-shifter looked terrified. As with Warren's display for Amber and her father in the lab earlier, it was all for show of course, but he had to admit he was almost enjoying himself.

Holme tried again. "Well, you're a hero, and heroes don't do that sort of thing… right?"

"I'm willing to make an exception, just this once."

Layla and Kate shared a glance, thinking what they'd gone through trying to get Holme scared enough to talk, and here Warren could make him totally freaked out in seconds, without even powering up.

Brett, however, seemed to be taking Warren almost as seriously as Holme was.

"Because he's not worth it."

Warren pretended to think it over, and then nodded in off-handed agreement and let go of Holme who collapsed onto the ground. He turned to Simmonds. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"He's actually been quite useful, believe it or not," remarked Magenta and Brett gave a half-smile at her backhanded compliment.

Warren looked impressed, knowing the Maj didn't praise anyone – even if it was veiled in sarcasm – unless they really deserved it.

"Cool," Will smiled and nodded in approval. "Well, would you mind booking this lot?" He gestured to Holme and then over his shoulder in the general direction of the force field room where Dr. Shelley, Amber and the ninjas were imprisoned. "Like you said once before, we're kinda out of our jurisdiction."

"Sure," replied Brett, trying not to sound too eager at their acceptance, and he took out his cell phone to make arrangements. He walked with them to the elevator in order to activate the biometric sensor for them.

On the way, Bradley asked Layla, "So how did you know that wasn't really Warren?"

"Well, we'd just seen Warren's flame construct, so I knew he had his powers back," she answered. There was no point trying to cover up the truth that they were superheroes to her cousins now. "And as you might know from your comics, pyros have a very high body temperature." She gestured back towards Holme with her thumb. "He didn't."

"Stupid brick," commented Kate. "I can't believe he thought you'd fall for it after what happened last time."

"_What_ happened last time?" asked Warren suspiciously, wondering if he should have roasted the punk after all.

"Nothing worth frying him for, don't worry," Layla reassured him.

"Sounds like you've got quite a story to share with us," remarked Will as they entered the elevator.

Layla glanced over at her cousins. "Speak for yourselves."

* * *

The bureaucratic aftermath was nearly as bad as the incident itself. Well, almost. 

Keith and Bradley had to sign non-disclosure agreements straight away, and the gang had to concoct a cover story for their mother to explain where they'd been all day and why they were home so late. The two of them also had to give testimony, separately, to the National Council of Superheroes about what they'd witnessed of Amber and her father's operation.

After Bradley's interview, he and Warren went through his _Knight-Fire_ comic and the hero set him straight on what was true and what wasn't.

"So what Amber said about your father being in super villain prison was true?" Bradley said cautiously, and Warren nodded ruefully.

"You know what they say, you can't choose your family. Although, I will admit, your brother's improving."

He grinned. "Yeah, he's been a lot better to me too, lately." Keith had even taken his mother shopping that day, something he really hated, to get her out of the way to cover for Bradley's absence.

When they had finished going through the comic, Bradley rather shyly asked for Knight-Fire to autograph it, which Warren did with a wry smile, and then his cousin-in-law showed him his newest superhero trading cards – the complete set of the Guardians.

"So how was your disciplinary hearing?" Bradley asked after a while.

"Not too bad. Amazingly they actually had their priorities right and they were more concerned about the fact that they've got a bunch of rogue fanatics in their ranks than about what we'd done wrong."

Still, there had been quite a lot of criticism. Brett had been raked over the coals for not disclosing his suspicions about Amber and her father, but the Guardians had put in a good word for him – or at least they'd tried to, considering that they were somewhat in trouble themselves.

Will had the least misdemeanors to his name, but he had fully supported what his team had done in his absence and insisted on sharing responsibility for their actions. Warren had too, plus he was grilled for Excessive Use of Violence and Fear Tactics. The rest of them were in trouble for going AWOL, just as they'd expected, however they were also reprimanded for using an experimental isotope on someone who was effectively a prisoner of war, not to mention letting said prisoner escape. Although the last bit was mostly excused by the fact that they'd re-captured him.

Warren continued, "We just got a lecture about not playing entirely by the rules, and they told me to not be so nasty to the bad guys."

"But, why not, if they deserve it?"

"Not really my place to judge what they deserve," the pyro replied. "And besides, if we get to the point of sinking to their level, we'd be no better than them, actually. It's not just the fact that we're on the government payroll that makes us the good guys."

Bradley nodded slowly in understanding. This superhero business was a lot more complicated than he'd ever realized.

* * *

Layla sat down at their table in the deserted reception hall with an exaggerated sigh. "I can't believe we actually made it the whole way through the wedding without some crisis interrupting everything." 

Warren responded with an amused half-smile. It had been a very nice wedding, and they'd all managed to enjoy themselves despite the fact that they had been constantly expecting something to happen. Now that it was getting late and most of the guests had gone home, they could safely say that the Guardians had succeeded in getting through a major social event without incident, possibly for the first time since they started hero work.

"Did you get it before they left?" he asked her.

"Yes," she answered, putting Kate's cell phone on the table. "But it won't make any difference considering Will still has his."

"Not the part that counts," he smirked, holding up the SIM card between his fingers. Lifting it hadn't been easy considering Stronghold didn't let his phone out of his sight ever, not even during the fit of nerves before his wedding, and Warren had relied heavily on Zach and Ethan as a distraction factor. It was worth the effort though, considering it was the only way Will and Kate would be able to actually relax and leave Maxville behind.

Layla grinned. "He's going to get you for that." Even if it _was_ for his own good.

"I think he already did," Warren replied darkly.

She looked at him for a moment before realizing what he was referring to. "Oh, come on, I thought it was really sweet of them to share their first dance with us considering we didn't get to have one."

"I don't do 'sweet'," he muttered. "And what are you grinning at?"

"Oh, nothing." Layla buried her face in his shoulder to hide her knowing expression. Despite his gruff objections, she could tell that he had actually been quite touched by Will and Kate's gesture, not that he would ever admit it, not to her and possibly not even to himself.

"Nothing, huh? Then why are you trying to hide in my waistcoat?"

Layla managed to compose herself enough to show her face, and she pulled away from him slightly. "So, you think Zach's going to get the hint?" she said, more to change the topic than anything else as she started to pull the pins out of her hair.

"Mmm. I think that was unsubtle enough for even _him_ to get."

Somehow Magenta had contrived to catch the bouquet – their friends all suspected Kate had colluded with her – which she had then carried around for the rest of the evening, eventually tucking it into Zach's top pocket. Considering they all knew Magenta's general distaste for feminine things like flowers, they reckoned she had pretty much made her point.

"Nice speech, by the way," Layla commented, shaking her hair loose with her fingers. "Short and to the point." It had lasted less than two minutes.

"What else was I supposed to say?" he asked. "All the funny and embarrassing stories I have about Stronghold are Classified." A number of the guests were civilians, both friends from work and extended family members.

He gently helped pull the last two pins out of her hair and she couldn't help smiling. So much for 'not doing sweet'.

Then her cell phone rang. "Oh, hi Will." After listening for a moment she passed the phone to Warren as he handed her the hairpins. "It's for you."

"Hey, Stronghold. What, did you stop at the first payphone you could find?" He shared a glance with Layla and put on a mock-hurt tone. "Are you that worried about how I'm looking after your team? I'm hurt by your lack of trust, really I am. I mean, I've got the situation perfectly under control. _Zach, talk to me buddy, don't die on me now, man!_ What's that? No, no everything's fine._ Put the gun down, Magenta – just because I called you a purple Ewok is no reason to get violent!_ Not to worry, Flyboy, just enjoy your honeymoon."

By now Layla had the giggles, so he decided to include her as well. "_Layla, stop laughing hysterically and step away from that hamburger!_ Yes, I keep telling you, we're all fine, stop being so paranoid. See you in a week." He hung up with a smirk.

"He did realize you were joking, didn't he?" Layla said as soon as she could talk again.

"Well, if he didn't then he'll be flying in here – literally – in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…" He paused for effect after the countdown and then continued, "Nope, no sign of him. Guess he managed to put his hero complex on hold for once." Then he sighed, and the humor left his eyes. "Not that I'm one to talk about _that_, I guess."

"You're still upset about how Amber used your hero complex against you."

"Seems it's just so easy to exploit."

"Happens to lots of heroes, you know," she said gently.

"Yeah. But still, it's almost as much of a weakness as my annoying habit of losing my powers."

"No it's not. I mean, look at the alternative – superheroes who don't care."

"It doesn't have to be that extreme," he pointed out. "There's plenty of space in between."

"I guess so. But still, I wouldn't call it so much a weak point as a… less-strong one." He gave an amused snort at that, and she went on, "I mean, that's how you got your powers back, so it can't be all bad."

"Also how I lost them in the first place," he reminded her, just as his own phone rang, this time with the emergency ring tone. "If that's Stronghold again…" he threatened lightly.

"He wouldn't," Layla assured him. Will knew better than to cry wolf. "Besides, he wouldn't be able to from a payphone."

Warren answered his phone. "Yeah?" He listened for a bit, looking serious, and then he frowned. "They want it _what_?" He listened some more and then said, "Fine, okay, we're on it." He snapped his phone shut and went over to the door that led out into the garden area. "Hey, guys, fish Zach out of the fountain," he called, "We've got work to do!"

* * *

Less than a minute later, the team was in uniform and assembled at the van. 

"You okay to drive?" Warren asked Zach, who was still rather damp.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"What, you just assume that Zach would _only_ be jumping around in a fountain under the influence of alcohol?" Magenta remarked to Warren who shook his head slightly and gestured to everyone to pile in.

"So, what are we dealing with?" asked Ethan when they were underway.

Warren related what the Mayor had just told him. "Fire Thing has escaped from its 'cage' at the NCS Lab just out of town, and obviously we need to take care of it before it gets out of the facility and goes on the rampage."

Ethan called up the record from his database, and put up some photos on the screen for the others to see. It was a 20-foot long monster serpent composed entirely of fire.

"Looks like a huge flame construct," Layla observed.

"It is, actually," Ethan replied. "Fire Thing started out as a construct created by our old friend Hellfire three years ago, but then it was accidentally exposed to a huge dose of gamma radiation which caused it to mutate into a self-sustaining fire-monster."

Magenta took over. "It was captured soon after it became… _that_… and it's been kept in a secure observation tank at the Lab."

"Apparently not all _that_ secure if it's escaped," remarked Denise.

"Yeah, no comment. Apparently they have no idea how it escaped, not that that's really relevant right now."

'_What were they __KEEPING it for anyway?'_ asked Zach over the comm from the cab.

"Research purposes," answered Maj.

'_Man, what is it with the NCS and dodgy research?' _

"It's not necessarily dodgy in this case, Zach," Denise responded. "The effects of radiation on – "

"Yeah, yeah," Warren interrupted. "There's more: they want it back… alive."

They all just looked at him for a moment.

'_Alive?'_ repeated Zach and they could hear the disbelief in his voice.

"You know, I'm all for Anti Cruelty To Animals and all that, but with something that dangerous, even I'd prefer it if we could just destroy it," said Layla anxiously, looking at the picture of the fire creature. "Isn't this a job for a cryokinetic or someone like that?"

"Apparently they're afraid cryo powers would kill it," answered Warren.

"That seriously limits our options on dealing with it." Ethan looked worried. "I think we should call the Commander and Jetstream."

"Not unless we absolutely have to." Maybe it was a pride thing, but the last thing he wanted was to be running to Will's mommy and daddy for help the whole time Will and Kate were gone.

They arrived at the NCS Lab and Zach landed the van inside the grounds. By now Maj had accessed the Laboratory's security camera system, and they could see that the escaped monster was causing fiery havoc as it tore from lab to lab trying to find a way out. Fire fighters were struggling to keep up with putting out the fires as it kept creating more in its wake.

After watching this for a few moments, Warren said, "Okay, I shouldn't have to say this, but no one who is not fireproof is going in."

The others shared a glance, knowing that pretty much excluded all of them.

"You're not planning to take it on by yourself, are you?" Ethan asked and Warren gave a slight shrug to indicate that was exactly what he had in mind. "You can't, Warren! You'll just lose your powers again; I have absolutely no doubt about it. As your doctor, I – "

"What am I supposed to do?" Warren demanded a bit harshly. "Do you want to go and explain to the citizens of Maxville that people got hurt and their houses got burned down because the so-called hero who _could _have helped them didn't because he was too afraid that he would get an owie?"

He opened the back door of the van and jumped out.

Ethan called after him, "Fine, just try not to make it angry – that'll make it even hotter."

The pyro paused for a second, thoughtfully. "Yes, that would, wouldn't it?"

* * *

Warren strode through the burning labs towards Fire Thing, 'psionically extinguishing some of the flames as he went, although only where people were trapped so as to conserve his strength. He was going to need everything he had against the overgrown construct. 

When he got to the fire-monster, it had two fire fighters pinned down and it was toying with them like a cat playing with a mouse. Warren created a small construct to distract the creature, and sent it on 'autopilot'. He decided it was safer to just assume that if he kept it under control and it collided with Fire Thing, he would probably suffer the same psychic backlash as when he'd had his constructs connect with other people's before, even though it strictly wasn't quite the same situation.

Fire Thing quickly lost interest in the fire fighters and turned its attention to the little construct buzzing around its head. Warren crossed quickly to the cornered men, only to find that one of them was trapped literally as well as figuratively, caught under a fallen lab cabinet. The pyro helped him out and told them both to beat it.

Just then his construct flew into Fire Thing causing it to roar in pain and lash out with its tail, which swung around and connected with Warren, sending him into a pile of burning rubble. Should have seen that coming, he thought with a groan. He was just so used to having the rest of his team watching his back, he'd gotten careless.

As he got up he noticed a small glass flask with a stopper among the debris. It was empty, but unbroken, which was quite impressive considering the fact that most of the other laboratory equipment in the area was shattered. Slipping it into his pocket, Warren turned back to the fire-monster which was still being harassed by his construct. He made a few more and sent them to irritate it as well. Keeping a safe distance, he briefly established mental contact with one of the constructs and instructed it to collide with the creature, which made it roar and thrash around again.

'_What is he DOING?'_ asked Ethan on the comm.

'_It looks like he's baiting it,'_ offered Denise's voice.

'_I told him NOT to make it angry!'_

'_Since when did Warren do what anyone told him?'_ commented Magenta.

"You know, I _can_ hear you guys," Warren said, but they ignored his remark.

'_Dude, I think he's also making it get tired really fast,' _Zach observed.

'_You know, Zach could be onto something,'_ said Denise, _'It's pouring more and more energy into its fire – it's got to run out sometime.'_

Give the girl a medal, thought Warren as he sent another construct straight at Fire Thing. At least someone had caught on to what he was trying to do.

He knew from his own experience of pyro-construction that the larger and hotter the construct, the more energy it required to maintain. Extra heat, in particular, took disproportionately more effort, which was why both he and Kate tended to go for a greater number of smaller constructs at low temperatures (relatively speaking).

It was a risk to base his whole strategy on the conjecture that this mutant construct would operate on the same basis, and he knew it. But, if need be, he was pretty sure he could take Fire Thing down 'psionically, although he couldn't guarantee that he would be able to return it to the Lab alive and he would very likely sacrifice his powers – or worse – in the process. So that was very much the last resort.

'_Yeah, SOMETIME,'_ responded Ethan to Denise's comment. '_Could be hours or days even.'_

Or minutes, Warren reckoned. Already the fire creature wasn't whipping around quite as fast and its reaction time was definitely slowing. Time to crank up the pressure.

He made five more constructs and sent them along with all of the others to attack the fire serpent at the same time. In an almost panicked response, Fire Thing lashed out in all directions, creating a huge explosion of light and fire, and Warren had to shield his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he saw that the monster had burned a lot of itself off in the process, and it was now only about a tenth of the size it had been.

Before it could recover and rebuild itself, Warren took careful 'psionic control of it and tried to reduce it further. It fought against his control, and he was reluctant to grip it any tighter, so he sent the constructs back for another strafing run, and mentally let the creature go. It shrieked as the constructs attacked and exploded again in self-defense.

Now it was only about a foot long and it was evidently quite exhausted. It barely struggled as Warren picked it up using his pyro-psionics and stuffed it into the glass flask he'd picked up earlier. As he sealed the flask with the stopper, the miniature fire-monster suddenly realized it was trapped and it renewed its struggles, trying to burst out of the container.

"Give it up, Tinkerbell," he smirked. "It's armored glass."

* * *

All Layla could think from the moment Warren first stepped into the same room as Fire Thing was that he was going to lose his powers again. Maybe she was being a bit melodramatic, but she couldn't see any other way to deal with the monster. As the fight went on, she supposed she should be grateful if his powers were the only thing he lost. 

And then that explosion broke their contact with both him and the security camera footage, leaving them with no idea what was going on inside the Lab. She couldn't help worrying that if he'd already lost his powers before the blast, he wouldn't have had his invulnerability at the time…

After a second, smaller explosion, a shared glance with the others told her they were thinking something along the same lines, and without a word they piled out of the van and headed into the building.

Warren met them on the stairs with a mock-scowl. "Looks like I'm not the only one who doesn't do what people tell them," he remarked, referring to the fact that he'd instructed non-fireproof people to stay outside, and he held up a small glass flask with a long thin ribbon of flames writhing around inside. "They might find it easier do research on it at this size."

He stopped, confused by the way they were all looking at him like something amazing had happened. "What?"

"Nothing," said Layla, her eyes suspiciously shiny as she gave him a huge hug. "Just, well done."

Zach clapped him on the shoulder. "Fire-monster whisperer, yeah!"

After a round of handshakes and hugs they set off to celebrate another crisis averted, another day saved, another problem solved… and at minimal cost.

All in all, it was just another day at the office, really.

**The End**

**

* * *

**

_**A/N:**__ There you have it – what was going to be a 'shortish' sequel of 3 or 4 chapters ended up being 8! Thanks to everyone who has stuck it out with me for this installment, I really appreciate your patience and your support._

_And now it is time for me to take a break from writing fan fiction (apart from a one-shot now and then) in order to concentrate on my original writing, the kind that hopefully can get published someday…_

_That said, I am __hoping to return to this world for another sequel, but it won't be for at least a few months._


End file.
